Creating the Git ignore file

If you are using Git—the most popular distributed version control system—ignoring some files and folders from version control is much easier than with Subversion.

Getting ready

Make sure that your Django project is under the Git version control.

How to do it…

Using your favorite text editor, create a .gitignore file at the root of your Django project and put these files and directories there, as follows:

# .gitignore
# Project files and directories
/myproject/local_settings.py
/myproject/static/
/myproject/tmp/
/myproject/media/

# Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files
__pycache__/
*.py[cod]
*$py.class

# C extensions
*.so

# PyInstaller
*.manifest
*.spec

# Installer logs
pip-log.txt
pip-delete-this-directory.txt

# Unit test / coverage reports
htmlcov/
.tox/
.coverage
.coverage.*
.cache
nosetests.xml
coverage.xml
*.cover

# Translations
*.pot

# Django stuff:
*.log

# Sphinx documentation
docs/_build/

# PyBuilder
target/

How it works…

The .gitignore file specifies the paths that should intentionally be untracked by the Git version control system. The .gitignore file that we created in this recipe will ignore the Python-compiled files, local settings, collected static files, temporary directory for uploads, and media directory with the uploaded files.

Tip

If you keep all your settings in a conf Python package as described in the Configuring settings for development, testing, staging, and production environments recipe, add settings.py to the ignored files too.

See also

• The Setting the Subversion ignore property recipe