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A .gitignore for themes

What a theme's .gitignore keeps out of the repository - editor leftovers, backups, logs, build output and local settings - the file the design wizard writes, and how to check that nothing secret or private slipped in.

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Address: https://doc.exponential.earth/exphelp/viewer/help/designers/extensions/gitignore-for-themes.md

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A .gitignore for themes

This page is for designers preparing a theme repository. A .gitignore keeps files that should never be published out of every commit.

What the design wizard writes

# Editor leftovers
*~
#*#
.#*
*.orig
*.rej
*.bak
*.swp
*.swo

# Operating system
.DS_Store
Thumbs.db

# Build output and dependencies
/vendor/
/node_modules/
*.log

What to add for a theme

AddWhen
var/Your scripts write caches or logs inside the theme
share/*.bak*, share/*.backup-*You back up .dba files next to them (as sevenx_themes_media ignores share/db_data.dba.bak.*)
/design/*/stylesheets/*.mapYou build CSS from sources and do not ship source maps
.env, *.key, *.pemNever needed in a theme; ignore them so they cannot be committed by accident

If you compile stylesheets from Sass or another source, decide whether you commit the result. Installations do not run your build tools, so the compiled CSS normally must be committed.

Step by step: check before every release

  1. git status --short --ignored shows what is ignored (!!) and what is not.
  2. git ls-files | grep -E '\.(bak|orig|log|key|pem)$|/\.env$' prints nothing.
  3. Search tracked files for secrets: git grep -n -i -E 'password|secret|api[_-]?key|token' -- settings/ and read every match.
  4. If something private was committed and pushed, removing it in a new commit does not remove it from the history. Change the secret (it is no longer secret) and ask for help before rewriting a published history.

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This documentation is free documentation, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later.

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