SourceTree does not honour Global Ignore List

Question

I have a ~/.gitignore_global file that contains ".DS_Store", with a correct path in ~/.gitconfig (i.e."[core] excludesfile = /Users/myusername/.gitignore_global") in order to find it. This works just as expected in the terminal, i.e. any .DS_Store are successfully ignored.

But in SourceTree, all .DS_Store files causes "Uncommitted changes". Note that in Preferences -> Git, the path to "Global Ignore List" is correct (i.e. "/Users/myusername/.gitignore_global"), so apparently "excludesfile" has been properly consulted in .gitconfig. But still, the Global Ignore List doesn't seem to be honored. What am I doing wrong?

Stefan Guath · Answer

When entering "git status" in Terminal I get the response:

"On branch Foo
Your branch is up-to-date with 'Bar'.
nothing to commit, working directory clean"

But when starting up SourceTree the .DS_Store files still causes "Uncommitted changes". I finally managed to get rid of it by executing various manual operations on the .DS_Store files, such as 'ignore', 'delete' and some others that I don't remember. It seems to work now, but it was a long and strange way of getting there.

Tim Crall1 · Answer

Is there any chance that you accidentally "added" the file before putting it on the ignore?  If you go to the command line and do a "git status", what does it report?