How do I configure git to ignore some files locally?

You can simply add a .gitignore file to your home directory, i.e. $HOME/.gitignore or ~/.gitignore. Then tell git to use that file with the command:

git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore

This is a normal .gitignore file which git references when deciding what to ignore. Since it's in your home directory, it applies only to you and doesn't pollute any project .gitignore files.

I've been using this approach for years with great results.

This is a brief one-line solution to exclude a local file.

 echo YOUR_FILE_OR_DIRECTORY >> .git/info/exclude

Both --assume-unchanged and --skip-worktree are NOT A CORRECT WAY to ignore files locally... Kindly check this answer and the notes in the documentation of git update-index. Files that for any reason keep changing frequently (and/or change from a clone to another) and their changes should not be committed, then these files SHOULD NOT be tracked in the first place.

However, the are two proper ways to ignore files locally (both work with untracked files). Either to put files names in .git/info/exclude file which is the local alternative of .gitignore but specific to the current clone. Or to use a global .gitignore (which should be properly used only for common auxiliary files e.g. pyz, pycache, etc) and the file will be ignored in any git repo in your machine.

To make the above as kind of automated (adding to exclude or global .gitignore), you can use the following commands (add to your bash-profile):

• Per clone local exclude (Note that you should be in the root of the repository when calling the command because of using the relative path), change ##FILE-NAME## to .git/info/exclude
• Global .gitignore, first make global .gitignore here then change ##FILE-NAME## to ~/.gitignore

Linux

alias git-ignore='echo $1 >> ##FILE-NAME##'
alias git-show-ignored='cat ##FILE-NAME##'
git-unignore(){
  GITFILETOUNIGNORE=${1//\//\\\/}
  sed -i "/$GITFILETOUNIGNORE/d" ##FILE-NAME##
  unset GITFILETOUNIGNORE
}

MacOS (you need the .bak for sed inplace modifications (i.e. you are forced to add a file extension to inplace sed. i.e. make a backup before replacing something), therefore to delete the .bak file I added rm filename.bak)

alias git-ignore='echo $1 >> ##FILE-NAME##'
alias git-show-ignored='cat ##FILE-NAME##'
git-unignore(){
  GITFILETOUNIGNORE=${1//\//\\\/}
  sed -i.bak "/$GITFILETOUNIGNORE/d" ##FILE-NAME##
  rm ##FILE-NAME##.bak
  unset GITFILETOUNIGNORE
}

Then you can do:

git-ignore example_file.txt
git-unignore example_file.txt

In order to ignore untracked files especially if they are located in (a few) folders that are not tracked, a simple solution is to add a .gitignore file to every untracked folder and enter in a single line containing * followed by a new line. It's a really simple and straightforward solution if the untracked files are in a few folders. For me, all files were coming from a single untracked folder vendor and the above just worked.

Just Simply add path to the file ypu want to remove from commits on any branch of current repo:

1. Unhide hidden files in Windows Directories Settings
2. Open Path REPO_MAIN_PATH/.git/info/exclude
3. Add for example **/toExcludeFile.bat

And thats it ! For me answears above are too long. KISS - Keep it stupid simple

For anyone who wants to ignore files locally in a submodule:

Edit my-parent-repo/.git/modules/my-submodule/info/exclude with the same format as a .gitignore file.