PyCharm mark directory as excluded via flag in the filesystem?

user_633961 0
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I would like to exclude some directories as excluded in PyCharm via a flag in the matching directory.

Example: Our tests create a directory called .reports.

I know how to exclude this directory in my PyCharm instance.

But we have many developers and many projects. I really would like to avoid every developer needing to mark this directory as excluded.

Is there a way to tell PyCharm to skip this file?

For example by creating an empty file called ".pycharm-exclude"?

I am looking for an automated way to exclude the directory, since we have several developers and each developer has several projects.

I created a feature request: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-51093

pycharm
3 Answers

I don't know of any way similar to an ignore file since it seems PyCharm wants you to use it's GUI for configuration. However, if you're flexible to a different approach...

Take a look at the default file/directory ignore list at Settings | Editor | File Types | Ignore files and subfolders

You can rename .reports -> .reports~, .reports.pyc, .reports.rbc, .svn, etc. and PyCharm will ignore it.

By default PyCharm ignores a number of patterns/names because they are common non project names. If you name a directory something which matches one of those patterns/names then you can trick PyCharm into ignoring that directory. There are ~20 patterns/names which are ignored by default (found at the path above) so I'd choose whatever creates the least confusion in the team / prevent some problem I'm unaware of.

If you wanted a more sensible name you could add .report; to this list as this list persists across all projects, but every developer would need to update it once.

For the sake of others who see this, there is also the more common exclude list at Settings | Project: ... | Project Structure | Exclude files, which defaults to empty and does NOT persist across projects

user_38214250

I don't know of a file that works the way that you describe. However, you can take a look at your idea's project file .idea/<project>.iml (where <project> is your project's name). So let's say your project is called your-app, then it can be found under .idea/your-app.iml. It should describe the excluded folder somewhere like this:

  <component name="NewModuleRootManager">
    <content url="file://$MODULE_DIR$">
      <excludeFolder url="file://$MODULE_DIR$/.reports" />
    </content>
  </component>

You could create a fresh clone of the repository, open it in PyCharm, exclude the folder and commit the your-app.iml file.

It's not perfect as it might override your colleagues' settings when they check it out, but it basically gives them a template file that excludes that folder. You should probably then add the file to the .gitignore file so that no one overwrites the shared file afterwards:

# .gitignore
# exclude .idea folder
.idea/

# or just the file
.idea/your-app.iml

If the file is already ignored by git, you might have to add it with the force flag:

git add -f .idea/your-app.iml

In that case you probably won't have to add it to any .gitignore file afterwards.

Note: I have not tested this. I expect it might introduce conflicts or overwrite the your-app.iml file for developers that already have it in their local repository. It probably works best for new projects.

user_32981750

You can edit the project .idea/<project-name>.iml using code like this:

Code to edit IML file

from pathlib import Path
import xml.etree.ElementTree as et

EXCLUDE_PREFIX = 'file://$MODULE_DIR$'
idea_dir = Path('.idea')  # pycharm stores the project files in .idea
project_file = next(idea_dir.glob('*.iml'), None) if idea_dir.exists() else None

if project_file is None:
    # we expect to be in the project root directory
    exit(1)

project_file = project_file.resolve()
tree = et.parse(project_file)
module_dir = tree.find(".//content[@url='file://$MODULE_DIR$']")

if module_dir is None:
    # add a node for the NewModuleRootManager
    root_manager = tree.find(".//component[@name='NewModuleRootManager']")
    module_dir = et.SubElement(root_manager, 'content', url='file://$MODULE_DIR$')

# find which exclude directories we need to add
existing_excludes = {Path(f.attrib['url'].replace(EXCLUDE_PREFIX, '.'))
                     for f in module_dir.findall("excludeFolder")}
desired_excludes = {f.parent for f in idea_dir.parent.rglob('.pycharm-exclude')}
new_excludes = sorted(f'{EXCLUDE_PREFIX}/{f}' for f in desired_excludes - existing_excludes)

# add the needed exclude directories and save the file
if new_excludes:
    for exclude in new_excludes:
        et.SubElement(module_dir, 'excludeFolder', url=exclude)
    et.indent(tree)  # this expects python 3.9
    tree.write(str(project_file), xml_declaration=True, encoding='UTF-8')

How does this work?

The project .iml file is xml. We can read in the XML using etree and then edit it accordingly. It is straight forward to look for our marker file, and then add the excludeFolder nodes to the xml as needed. The relevant portion of the .iml file xml looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<module type="PYTHON_MODULE" version="4">
  <component name="NewModuleRootManager">
    <content url="file://$MODULE_DIR$">
      <excludeFolder url="file://$MODULE_DIR$/exclued_dir" />
    </content>
  </component>
</module>
user_73117670
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