.gitignore not ignoring .idea path

Question

What am I missing that needs to be done in order to get git to ignore my .idea/ path?

ctote@ubuntu:~/dev/1$ git status
On branch master         


        

Answer 1

.gitignore only ignores newly added (untracked) files.

If you have files that have already been added to the repository, all their changes will be tracked as usual, even if they are matched by .gitignore rules.

To remove that folder from the repository (without deleting it from disk), do:

git rm --cached -r .idea