.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

To Solve Error "fatal: pathspec '.idea' did not match any files" after entering above command,

1. Check the path of your idea folder and its files.
2. For this do git status. It will list all the files as usual. Check the path of idea folder files. Mine was at ../.idea/workspace.xml. Notice the ../.idea
3. Modify the above suggested command in the accepted answer to git rm --cached -r ../.idea
4. You will then see this rm '.idea/workspace.xml' and the files will be removed.