Windows global gitignore not working... "Untracked files"

Question

Despite having a global gitignore on Windows OS, I am still getting a bunch of "Untracked files".

Below is a truncated list of what it looks like:

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        foo/bar/__pycache__/
        foo/pkg_name.egg-info/
        scripts/MainProcess.log
        scripts/__pycache__/
        test/foo/bar/__pycache__/
        test/test_pkg_name.egg-info/
        venv/

What am I doing wrong? What am I missing?

---

Background

On Windows 10 Pro my git version is git version 2.34.1.windows.1 , and here's my ~/.gitconfig :

[core]
    excludesfile = C:\\Users\\username\\.config\\git\\ignore

git config --list --show-origin outputs:

file:C:/Users/username/.gitconfig       core.excludesfile=C:\Users\username\.config\git\ignore

git check-ignore **.* outputs nothing.

Here is the PowerShell script used to generate the global gitignore:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $Env:USERPROFILE\.config\git

'Global/JetBrains','Global/Vim','Global/VisualStudioCode','Global/macOS','Python','Terraform' `
  | ForEach-Object {
    Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gitignore/master/$PSItem.gitignore"
  } > $Env:USERPROFILE\.config\git\ignore

git config --global core.excludesfile $Env:USERPROFILE\.config\git\ignore

The result is a C:\Users\username\.config\git\ignore file in UTF-16 LE encoding with LF endings. You can see the full file in a Pastebin here: https://pastebin.com/a730JHtc

Lastly, the checked out repo also has a per-repo .gitignore (UTF-8 encoding, CRLF line endings) inside that looks like this:

# Follow README.rst instructions on global gitignore

The README.rst instructions it speaks of have been translated into this question.

---

Research

There are many similar questions like this, none of them solved my problem:

• Global Git ignore
• My gitignore_global is not working even though gitconfig specify the absolute path
• global gitignore being, um, ignored
• https://mike.place/2020/global-gitignore/
• https://infyom.com/blog/how-to-setup-global-git-ignore-in-window

Similar unanswered questions:

• Global.gitignore not working, DS_Store files are still showing in untracked files
• Having problems with.gitignore and Untracked files

Answer 1

Your problem is that your ignore file is in UTF-16. While UTF-16 is common on Windows, it is practically unused elsewhere outside of some programming languages, and UTF-8 has mostly supplanted it. Git accepts ignore files only in UTF-8 or other ASCII-compatible encodings (in the event your patterns contain non-UTF-8 characters), so you'll need to change your file to be in the proper format for it to work.

I would also recommend using LF endings, although I don't believe those are absolutely required for it to work.

Answer 2

For what it's worth, taking into account the answer , we can update the PowerShell global gitignore creation command to:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $Env:USERPROFILE\.config\git
'Global/JetBrains','Global/Vim','Global/VisualStudioCode','Global/macOS','Python','Terraform' `
  | ForEach-Object {
    Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gitignore/master/$PSItem.gitignore"
  } `
  | Add-Content -Encoding UTF8 -Path $Env:USERPROFILE\.config\git\ignore

It turns out the git config --global core.excludesfile $Env:USERPROFILE\.config\git\ignore last line from above is not necessary.