Key Recommendations on the Usage of .gitignore file and Example

You can create the .gitignore file before or after running git init, but the best practice to create first. This ensures that when you initialize Git, it immediately ignores unnecessary files. Then run git init to initialize the repository with the correct ignored files in place.

echo "target/" >> .gitignore # Step 1: Create .gitignore with ignored files

Doing it Other Way

If you run git init first and then create .gitignore, any ignored files already added to Git won't be removed automatically. You'll need to manually remove them:

git rm -r --cached target/  # Removes ignored files from tracking

git commit -m "Updated .gitignore" # Commit changes

Example for Maven + Spring Boot

Create a .gitignore file in your project's root directory and add these entries to exclude unnecessary files:

# Ignore target folder (Maven compiled files)
target/


# Ignore build folder (Gradle compiled files)
build/


# Ignore IntelliJ IDEA and VSCode settings
.idea/
.vscode/


# Ignore logs and temp files
logs/
*.log
*.tmp


# Ignore OS-specific files
.DS_Store
Thumbs.db


# Ignore dependencies (use Maven/Gradle to fetch them)
*.jar
*.war
*.class


# Ignore environment variables and secrets
.env
application.properties
application.yml

If your application.properties contains database credentials, never push it to GitHub. You can use environmental variables instead.