A global .gitignore file

To have Git ignore certain files across all repositories you can create a global .gitignore with the following command in your terminal or command prompt:

git config --global core.excludesfile <Path_To_Global_gitignore_file>

Git will now use this in addition to each repository’s own .gitignore file. Rules for this are:

• If the local .gitignore file explicitly includes a file while the global .gitignore ignores it, the local .gitignore takes priority (the file will be included)
• If the repository is cloned on multiple machines, then the global .gigignore must be loaded on all machines or at least include it, as the ignored files will be pushed up to the repo while the PC with the global .gitignore wouldn’t update it. This is why a repo specific .gitignore is a better idea than a global one if the project is worked on by a team

This file is a good place to keep platform, machine or user specific ignores, e.g. OSX .DS_Store, Windows Thumbs.db or Vim *.ext~ and *.ext.swp ignores if you don’t want to keep those in the repository. So one team member working on OS X can add all .DS_STORE and _MACOSX (which is actually useless), while another team member on Windows can ignore all thumbs.bd