Conditional .gitignore files - adding logic to .gitignore

Question

So I have TypeScript project. The generated .d.ts and .js files can cause unnecessary merge conflicts.

However, this project is big and is currently only ~50% converted from JS to TS, so I cannot simply .gitignore all .js files. Furthermore, there are some .js files which I will never convert to .ts.

So is there a way to conditionally ignore a file?

The logic is of course simple:

ignore z.js if z.ts exists

Answer 1

So is there a way to conditionally ignore a file?

No, there isn't.

However, this project is big and is currently only ~50% converted from JS to TS, so I cannot simply .gitignore all .js files

You can. Files already tracked by Git are not affected by .gitignore , thus only *.js files generated by the build process will be ignored.

Answer 2

This is not possible , .gitignore is a very simple file and it doesn't allow any conditional rules for ignoring file(s) or folder(s).

However, you can create different patterns to include or exclude your file(s).

Please Take a look here for help on writing .gitignore patterns: .gitignore File Docs

Answer 3

You can have multiple .gitignore files. If all your typescript files are in one directory (or one directory structure) and your .js files are in another, place a new .gitignore file inside the typescript directory that ignores javascript files.

This will only ignore javascript files in that directory and subdirectories.