How can I stop .gitignore from appearing in the list of untracked files?

The .gitignore file should be in your repository, so it should indeed be added and committed in, as git status suggests. It has to be a part of the repository tree, so that changes to it can be merged and so on.

So, add it to your repository, it should not be gitignored.

If you really want you can add .gitignore to the .gitignore file if you don't want it to be committed. However, in that case it's probably better to add the ignores to .git/info/exclude, a special checkout-local file that works just like .gitignore but does not show up in "git status" since it's in the .git folder.

See also https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files

If you want to store the list of ignored files outside of your Git tree, you can use the .git/info/exclude file. It is applied only to your checkout of the repo.

You could actually put a line .gitignore into your .gitignore file. This would cause the .gitignore file to be ignored by git. I do not actually think this is a good idea. I think the ignore file should be version controlled and tracked. I'm just putting this out there for completeness.

You can also have a global user git .gitignore file that will apply automatically to all your repos. This is useful for IDE and editor files (e.g. swp and *~ files for Vim). Change directory locations to suit your OS.

1. Add to your ~/.gitconfig file:

   [core]
   excludesfile = /home/username/.gitignore
   

2. Create a ~/.gitignore file with file patterns to be ignored.

3. Save your dot files in another repo so you have a backup (optional).

Any time you copy, init or clone a repo, your global gitignore file will be used as well.

If someone has already added a .gitignore to your repo, but you want to make some changes to it and have those changes ignored do the following:

git update-index --assume-unchanged .gitignore

Source.

After you add the .gitignore file and commit it, it will no longer show up in the "untracked files" list.

git add .gitignore
git commit -m "add .gitignore file"
git status

Of course the .gitignore file is showing up on the status, because it's untracked, and git sees it as a tasty new file to eat!

Since .gitignore is an untracked file however, it is a candidate to be ignored by git when you put it in .gitignore!

So, the answer is simple: just add the line:

.gitignore # Ignore the hand that feeds!

to your .gitignore file!

And, contrary to August's response, I should say that it's not that the .gitignore file should be in your repository. It just happens that it can be, which is often convenient. And it's probably true that this is the reason .gitignore was created as an alternative to .git/info/exclude, which doesn't have the option to be tracked by the repository. At any rate, how you use your .gitignore file is totally up to you.

For reference, check out the gitignore(5) manpage on kernel.org.

The idea is to put files that are specific to your project into the .gitignore file and (as already mentioned) add it to the repository. For example .pyc and .o files, logs that the testsuite creates, some fixtures etc.

For files that your own setup creates but which will not necessarily appear for every user (like .swp files if you use vim, hidden ecplise directories and the like), you should use .git/info/exclude (as already mentioned).

This seems to only work for your current directory to get Git to ignore all files from the repository.

update this file

.git/info/exclude 

with your wild card or filename

*pyc
*swp
*~

If you've already checked in .gitignore and you want to ignore modifications to it, check out this answer:

Try using this command:

git update-index --assume-unchanged FILENAME_TO_IGNORE

To reverse it (if you ever want to commit changes to it), use:

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged

UPDATE:

Here's how to list 'assume unchanged' files under current directory:

git ls-files -v | grep -E "^[a-z]"

As the -v option will use lowercase letters for 'assume unchanged' files.

Navigate to the base directory of your git repo and execute the following command:

echo '\\.*' >> .gitignore

All dot files will be ignored, including that pesky .DS_Store if you're on a mac.