.gitignore is ignored by Git

Question

My .gitignore file seems to be being ignored by Git - could the .gitignore file be corrupt? Which file format, locale or culture does Git expect?

Answer 1

In my case, it's because the files already exist in the repository and I'm trying to ignore it.

These are the things I did to fix the issue:

• Copy the files to a temporary folder
• Remove them from my project folder.
• Commit the changes which remove those files from the repository
• Re-added those files to my project folder

By then, any changes I made on those files were ignored.

I think you can't ignore files that already exist on the repository.