Git Ignore file for Netbeans RCP projects

This article suggest a .gitignore file for GIT repositories that keep Netbeans RCP suite and module projects.

For short:

nbproject/private/
build/
dist/

As explained:

  • nbproject/private/ Matches the local, per-user configuration directories, which are suite/nbproject/private for suites and module/nbproject/private for module projects.
  • build/ Matches the module/build and suite/build directories. Modules store their compiled classes within the module/build directory. Suites write shareable artifacts into the module/build directory.
  • dist/ Matches the suite/dist directories, where suites store distributable artifacts like installation programs and java webstart.

If you prefer Eclipse EGit, then add following lines:

private
.project

As explained:

  • /.project Matches the file created by Eclipse EGit to locally mark the repository as an importable general Eclipse project. This enables Eclipse EGit as your favorite Git client.
  • According to Git man files, the specification of ignored directories could be prepended with **/, which did not work for Eclipse EGit (a known bug). Therefore, I tell EGit to ignore every directory name private, which is not as accurate as the rule nbproject/private.