How to fix “.gitignore not working” issue?

Sometimes git does not exclude files/folders added .gitignore especially if you had committed them before. Here is how to fix it.

I am ignoring node_modules from frontend project as an example

• Update .gitignore with the folder/file name you want to ignore. You can use anyone of the formats mentioned below (prefer format1)

### Format1  ###
node_modules/
node/### Format2  ###
**/frontend/node_modules/**
**/frontend/node/**

• Commit all the changes to git. Exclude the folder/files you don’t want commit, in my case node_modules
• Execute the following command to clear the cache

git rm -r --cached .

• Execute git status command and it should output node_modules and sub directories marked for deletion
• Now execute

git add .
git commit -m "fixed untracked files"

• That’s it. Comment if you any questions.

Note: Windows users make sure your .gitignore uses UTF-8 rather than UTF-16. See comment for details