Cargo Manifest

Excluding Non-Essential Cargo

Not everything belongs in version control. Build artifacts, logs, secrets, and temporary files should stay out. The .gitignore file tells Git what to ignore.

Creating a .gitignore File

Create a file named .gitignore in your repository root:

touch .gitignore

Common Patterns

# Dependencies
node_modules/
venv/
__pycache__/

# Build outputs
dist/
build/
*.exe
*.dll

# Logs
*.log
logs/

# Environment variables
.env
.env.local

# IDE files
.vscode/
.idea/
*.swp

# OS files
.DS_Store
Thumbs.db

# Temporary files
*.tmp
temp/

Pattern Rules

• #: Comments
• *: Wildcard (matches any characters)
• **: Matches across directories recursively
• !: Negation (don't ignore this)
• /: Directory separator

Examples

*.log              # Ignore all .log files
build/             # Ignore build directory
!important.log     # But track this one
**/temp            # Ignore temp in any subdirectory
/*.txt             # Ignore .txt files in root only

Language-Specific Templates

GitHub provides .gitignore templates for many languages at github.com/github/gitignore.

Global Ignore

Ignore files across all repositories:

git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global

When to Use .gitignore

Ignore:

• Generated files (build outputs)
• Dependencies (installed packages)
• Secrets (API keys, passwords)
• Personal IDE settings
• Log files
• Temporary files

Don't ignore:

• Source code
• Configuration templates
• Documentation
• Test files

Already Tracked Files

If you add a file to .gitignore after Git is already tracking it:

git rm --cached filename

This stops tracking it in Git but keeps the local file.

Checking Ignore Status

git status --ignored    # Show ignored files
git check-ignore -v filename  # Why is this ignored?

Next: Secure Communications

Your manifest is configured. Next, we'll set up SSH keys for secure communication with GitHub without repeatedly entering your account password.