Dotignorefile NPM

`.ignorefile`

The ignore file not to be ignored (relevant thread)

.ignorefile example

This is an attempt to make a standard for various ignore files in a single .ignorefile file. It is an INI-like file where contained in each section is the content of that specific ignore file.

This repository also serves as a tool to read the .ignorefile (as a step to be run with some postinstall or git hook) and generate the specific ignore files as utilized by applications, while also appending to or creating a .gitignore file that ignores the ignore files, so they're not uploaded to git.

It's created in TypeScript to iterate quickly but may be rewritten in a language like Go should this become useful.

What is `.ignorefile`?

It looks something like this:

[git]
.env

[prettier]
.task/
.turbo/

[docker]
node_modules/

[eslint]
dist/

It is formatted like an INI file, where each section is the name of the ignore file (without the "ignore" suffix) and the contents are the those of the specific ignore file (not the typical key/value pair given in an INI formatted file).

Additional Syntax Proposals

These are some ideas for additional syntax of the .ignorefile file.

Support subdirectories: While files like .gitignore can be put in the root of the project, files like .dockerignore need to be placed in the root of the build context, resulting in more ignore files littered throughout a project. Consider a syntax like so:

[docker ./packages/website/]
node_modules/
dist/

This would generate a .dockerignore file in the ./packages/website/ directory with the contents of the section.

Get Started

The command for generating the file will be ran like so (it's a WIP, use --help for docs):

npx dotignorefile@latest

You may also use this as a postinstall hook in your project. In your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "dotignorefile"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "dotignorefile": "latest"
  }
}

Development

# Ensure you're on the right Node version
nvm install
# enable Corepack so pnpm gets installed automatically
corepack enable
# Build project (or `pnpm dev` for watch mode)
pnpm build