I have a folder let's say,

src/main/resources/basic_abc

For running my code locally, I need to rename it to

src/main/resources/basic

This is a change I want to perform each time I work on this repository. I don't want git to keep on tracking this folder and telling me that basic_abc was renamed to basic. How can I stop git from tracking this rename change?

Furthermore, if I run the command git status, it really gives a messy output since there is a large number of files in this folder.

How could I avoid it?

CodePudding user response：

I think this can be done by ignoring a directory "locally".

• create a new "basic" directory
• copy all contents in "basic_abc" into it
• goto \.git\info in your project directory, open the exclude file.
• add a new line saying src/main/resources/basic.
• execute git status again, you will see git does not consider the new "basic" directory as an untracked file. But you need to synchronize its content with the "basic_abc" directory manually. As long as in the remote repository there is no directory or file named "basic" you are good to go.

The exclude file is for a "local git ignore". It has the same format as the .gitignore file but only works on your machine.

CodePudding user response：

Telling Git to ignore that basic_abc/ is gone

You can use git update-index --skip-worktree <file> to tell Git to ignore changes you've made locally to a file, so that git status and all other commands will just treat it as unchanged.

I tested, and this also works for a file that was removed. What I did not find is a way to do it for a whole directory, but it's not hard to script on the bash command line.

One file:

git update-index --skip-worktree basic_abc/file1

All the files in basic_abc/:

git status --porcelain |
   grep " D src/main/resources/basic_abc" |
   sed "s/^ D //" |
   xargs git update-index --skip-worktree

Explanations:

• git status is run with --porcelain so that you have stable machine-readable output.
• If needed, fix the grep expression so it finds exactly the files you want Git to pretend were not deleted/moved.
• The sed command keeps just the filename.
• And xargs calls git update-index --skip-worktree on the results of that pipeline.

Telling Git to ignore that basic/ has appeared

As @EddieDeng said, you can use .git/info/exclude or .gitignore to accomplish this, see his answer.

Reverting the --skip-worktree operation

You didn't ask, but the next logical question, when you've made changes to files in basic_abc/ basic, will be how to commit them. I'm mentioning it here because once you've run that --skip-worktree loop, renaming basic back to basic_abc and running git status or git add won't work!

Fortunately, that question is already half answered here on SO: How to list files ignored with 'skip-worktree' shows how to list the skipped files, and this command can revert them to not being skipped:

git ls-files -v . |
   grep "S src/main/resources/basic_abc" |
   sed "s/^S //" |
   xargs git update-index --no-skip-worktree

I'm not sure whether the git ls-files -v . output is as stable as the git status --porcelain output is, especially since the -t/-v/-f options are marked semi-deprecated in the manual, but this works at the moment, and I don't know how else to extract that list from Git.

CodePudding user response：

You could use git rm <folder> --cached - when needed you can simply add the folder again with git add <folder>. Note though that if you do a git commit -a before re-adding the folder, the removal will appear in that commit.

Important notice:

THE --cached argument IS IMPORTANT - WITHOUT THAT, git will DELETE the folder FROM YOUR HARD DISK.