I’m trying to collect some of my default settings, and one thing I realized I don’t have a standard for is .gitignore files. There’s a great thread showing a good .gitignore for Visual Studio projects, but I don’t see many recommendations for Python and related tools (PyGTK, Django).

So far, I have…

*.pyc
*.pyo

…for the compiled objects and…

build/
dist/

…for the setuptools output.

What are some best practices for .gitignore files, and where can I go for more about these best practices?

When using buildout I have following in .gitignore (along with *.pyo and *.pyc):

.installed.cfg
bin
develop-eggs
dist
downloads
eggs
parts
src/*.egg-info
lib
lib64

Thanks to Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Also I tend to put .svn in since we use several SCM-s where I work.

Github has a great boilerplate .gitignore

# Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files
__pycache__/
*.py[cod]

# C extensions
*.so

# Distribution / packaging
bin/
build/
develop-eggs/
dist/
eggs/
lib/
lib64/
parts/
sdist/
var/
*.egg-info/
.installed.cfg
*.egg

# Installer logs
pip-log.txt
pip-delete-this-directory.txt

# Unit test / coverage reports
.tox/
.coverage
.cache
nosetests.xml
coverage.xml

# Translations
*.mo

# Mr Developer
.mr.developer.cfg
.project
.pydevproject

# Rope
.ropeproject

# Django stuff:
*.log
*.pot

# Sphinx documentation
docs/_build/

local_settings.py, for django projects.

*~ for all projects.

Covers most of the general stuff –

# Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files
__pycache__/
*.py[cod]
*$py.class

# C extensions
*.so

# Distribution / packaging
.Python
build/
develop-eggs/
dist/
downloads/
eggs/
.eggs/
lib/
lib64/
parts/
sdist/
var/
wheels/
*.egg-info/
.installed.cfg
*.egg
MANIFEST

# PyInstaller
#  Usually these files are written by a python script from a template
#  before PyInstaller builds the exe, so as to inject date/other infos into it.
*.manifest
*.spec

# Installer logs
pip-log.txt
pip-delete-this-directory.txt

# Unit test / coverage reports
htmlcov/
.tox/
.coverage
.coverage.*
.cache
nosetests.xml
coverage.xml
*.cover
.hypothesis/
.pytest_cache/

# Translations
*.mo
*.pot

# Django stuff:
*.log
local_settings.py
db.sqlite3

# Flask stuff:
instance/
.webassets-cache

# Scrapy stuff:
.scrapy

# Sphinx documentation
docs/_build/

# PyBuilder
target/

# Jupyter Notebook
.ipynb_checkpoints

# pyenv
.python-version

# celery beat schedule file
celerybeat-schedule

# SageMath parsed files
*.sage.py

# Environments
.env
.venv
env/
venv/
ENV/
env.bak/
venv.bak/

# Spyder project settings
.spyderproject
.spyproject

# Rope project settings
.ropeproject

# mkdocs documentation
/site

# mypy
.mypy_cache/

Reference: python .gitignore

One question is if you also want to use git for the deploment of your projects. If so you probably would like to exclude your local sqlite file from the repository, same probably applies to file uploads (mostly in your media folder). (I’m talking about django now, since your question is also tagged with django)

Here are some other files that may be left behind by setuptools:

MANIFEST
*.egg-info