Setting a global .gitignore file

Everyone working on multiple Git projects might have thought the same: 'Why do I need to add the same [IDE and build tool] files to .gitignore for each single project? While reading the docs I found a very nice solution for this: git config core.excludesfile

Using this setting, someone creates a file named .gitignore_global and add its common ignored files to it. Then you need to point the config to this file and use additionally the --global flag to enable the new ignore file for every git project in your user space.

The listing shows all steps to be performed:

# 1. Create global .gitignore file
touch ~/.gitignore_global

# 2. Edit the file (in this case with vim)
vim ~/.gitignore_global

# 3. Set as global exclude file
git config --global core.excludesfile '~/.gitignore_global'