.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

For me it was yet another problem. My .gitignore file is set up to ignore everything except stuff that I tell it to not ignore. Like such:

/*
!/content/

Now this obviously means that I'm also telling Git to ignore the .gitignore file itself. Which was not a problem as long as I was not tracking the .gitignore file. But at some point I committed the .gitignore file itself. This then led to the .gitignore file being properly ignored.

So adding one more line fixed it:

/*
!/content/
!.gitignore