Marko Apfel
Development

Be careful when Git suppresses bin Folders

Warns about overly broad bin rules in .gitignore files, which can unintentionally exclude binaries from versioned SDKs and toolsets in self-contained development trees.

1 min read

Initial situation

Often for Visual Studio projects the typical content of a .gitignore file contains this line

  • bin or
  • [B|b]in

It is used to avoid that Git tries to track compile outputs as repository relevant data.

Problem

But keep in mind: this will also suppress bin folders of additional stuff like frameworks and toolsets. For instance

  • Microsoft.SDKs
    contains a folder named Bin with a lot of programs
  • Simian
    contains a folder named bin with the program themselves

If you store such artifacts also in the repository - according to the principle of a “self containing project” – you could lost the content in the bin folder!

Solution

Till yet I don’t have a good idea.

So I verify for each new added toolset or framework whether it has or has not such a bin folder. If it has, then I must add this bin folder manually to the repository so that Git track it.