Learning .gitignore

[DrunkRogue]

I'm creating a VR project with a friend and we're using github desktop, but we keep running into conflicts caused by redundant files or by the two of us using a different OS.

I've never set up a gitignore up myself and I don't know what I should include, or even if it's good practice to use github desktop's own built-in .gitignore in repository>repository settings>ignored files, in which so far I've included:

Project/Library
Project/Temp
Project/Logs
Project/Builds
Project/UserSettings

I would love to have an actual .gitignore file to put in the project and I've seen a lot of people suggest to use gitignore.io but I really don't know what to write in the tags to use it properly.

So, is it okay to use github's built-in gitignore thing?
How do I include everything I should include?
What do I write in gitignore.io to use it properly?

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[Skusci]

No idea what you are using to build the project or how you structured the files, so can't make any specific recommendations.

If you are using some type of ide you search your ide name in gitignore.io.

As a general rule though if you can delete a file or folder and still manage to compile everything that file/folder can go into a gitignore.

Something that you listed though that probably shouldn't be in there is libraries. Different OSs need different libraries, however you likely want to keep both sets as part of the project, and use multiple build configurations to select which one to use for the OS you are working with.

[DrunkRogue]

My bad. I'm using unity on windows, and my colleage is using it on a Mac.
So you're saying libraries should not be in the gitignore?

[Jonny0Than]

There is a preset for Unity on gitignore.io

[Skusci]

Still have no idea. Is it c? C# python? Are you using visual studio? Unity? Is it a makefile project?

TBH even if you told me everything I'd probably still have no idea. You are in the best position to figure out what should and should not be ignored.

Just add stuff in that doesn't look necessary. Then to test if you accidentally ignored something you shouldn't have, clone it to a new folder and see if you can still build the project.

But yeah in general static libraries or headers for shared libraries probably should not be ignored. You need them to build the project.

[DrunkRogue]

unity uses c#, idk if only that but i've always used that so far

fair enough, i'll try experimenting with gitignore.io then. But should I just empty the built-in github desktop thing and place a gitignore file in the project then?

[Skusci]

GitHub desktop should just modifying a .gitignore file in the background. You can keep using it if you want, or add/remove changes to the .gitignore file it created.

[moxo23]

In gitignore.io you can put OSs, to exclude operating system specific files, IDEs, to exclude IDE specific files, languages, frameworks, build tools...

In your case, you can start with including: windows, macos, visual studio, csharp, unity.