Technical information on this site may be out of date : no updates since 2015

git files with local changes I don't want committed

March 25 2013 : posted under git

I’m working on a project where I find I want to semi-regularly adjust a config file for local testing, but want to be sure I don’t commit that file by mistake.

Seems the best approach is

git update-index --skip-worktree $filename

This tells git to skip this file when I push, if the remote file changes it will warn me

To switch back

git update-index --no-skip-worktree $filename

There is also a assume-unchanged option - but this is aimed more at performance and bug workarounds - it realy does assume the file is unchanged - which in my case is incorrect.