Git: How to ignore/specify files for *checkout*

Question

If I don\'t want .html files tracked I can add the pattern to .gitignore and they\'ll be ignored. I\'d like to know how I can do the converse - at checkout, how could I ask git

Answer 1

If you want just a one-time change (or not consistent) or you just don't want to put files in .gitignore then do the below:

1. Stash specific files that you want to exclude from checkout

git stash push -m "files_to_ignore" my/path/of/the/file/file.txt

2. Do checkout as you expected before:

git checkout .

3. Extract stashed content:

git stash apply stash^{/files_to_ignore}

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The complete solution using git aliases can look like this:

alias reset-non-dev='git stash push -m "ignore_files" MyRepo/file1.txt MyRepo/dir/file2.js MyRepo/dir/dir2/file3.cs PSOne/Startup/PSOne/Views/Login.xaml.cs ; git checkout . ; git stash apply stash^{/ignore_files} ;'

Later you can use this alias simply by putting its name in git bash and hitting enter.

One benefit here that I observed is that with this approach you can change the files or skip them whenever you really need it and not marked such files as always ignored.