How to fix The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files in Git

Use git check-ignore with the verbose flag to find exactly which pattern is causing the file to be ignored:

git check-ignore -v path/to/your/file

This outputs the source file, line number, pattern, and pathname. For example:

.gitignore:3:*.log    debug.log

This tells you line 3 of .gitignore has the pattern *.log that's matching debug.log.

If you need to track a specific file despite the ignore rule, use the -f or --force flag:

git add -f path/to/your/file

This overrides the ignore pattern for this specific file. Once the file is tracked, Git will continue tracking it even though the ignore pattern still exists.

Note: This is useful for one-off exceptions but doesn't solve the underlying pattern conflict.

For a permanent solution, add a negation pattern to your .gitignore. Negation patterns start with ! and override previous ignore rules:

# In .gitignore
*.log
!important.log

For files in subdirectories, you may need to also un-ignore parent directories:

# Wrong - won't work if parent is ignored
build/
!build/important-file.txt

# Correct - un-ignore the directory first
build/*
!build/important-file.txt

Your global gitignore might be ignoring the file. Check if you have one configured:

git config --global core.excludesFile

If this returns a path (commonly ~/.gitignore or ~/.config/git/ignore), inspect that file:

cat $(git config --global core.excludesFile)

Remove or modify any patterns that shouldn't apply to this repository.

Every Git repository has a local exclude file that isn't shared with others:

cat .git/info/exclude

This file uses the same format as .gitignore but only affects your local clone. Remove any patterns here that are blocking files you need to track.

If you're using git add *, the shell expands * to include all files, including ignored ones, which Git then warns about.

Instead, use:

git add .

The . tells Git to add all files relative to the current directory, and Git will automatically skip ignored files without warning. This is the recommended way to stage all changes.

If the file type should never have been ignored, remove or modify the pattern in .gitignore:

# Find all .gitignore files in the repository
find . -name ".gitignore" -type f

# Edit the relevant .gitignore
nano .gitignore

After modifying .gitignore, stage both the gitignore and the previously-ignored file:

git add .gitignore path/to/your/file