JoshuaKGoldberg / JoshuaKGoldberg/dot-com

🚀 Feature: Blog post on why I keep my .gitignores teeny

Open
#337 0 comments 1 reaction 1 assignee Claimed by @JoshuaKGoldberg View on GitHub
status: accepting prs type: feature
Dominant language
MDX
Stars
39
Forks
12
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

### Bug Report Checklist

- [X] I have tried restarting my IDE and the issue persists.
- [X] I have pulled the latest `main` branch of the repository.
- [X] I have [searched for related issues](https://github.com/JoshuaKGoldberg/dot-com/issues?q=is%3Aissue) and found none that matched my issue.

### Overview

This comes up once in a while. Contributors sometimes ask to add files like `.DS_STORE`, `.idea`, `Session.vim`, etc. to `.gitignore`s. I generally ask not to because:

1. The fewer lines of config in a file / in a repo overall, the easier it is for folks to understand the repo
2. There is a practically unbounded set of _stuff_ folks want to `.gitignore`
3. If I start allowing one type of _stuff_ -e.g. editor configs- then that set will grow over time
4. Therefore, I'm just ... not into having any non-essential `.gitignore` files

In other words: my goal with `.gitignore`, as with other configs, is to make it _as small as possible_.

### Additional Info

💖

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.