It's a pet peeve of mine when people put stuff like this in a project's `.gitignore`. The proper place is either your global gitignore (probably appropriate for stupid stuff like this) or in your clone in `.git/info/exclude`.
`.gitignore` is for stuff that all developers need to ignore, like compiler output, and should be kept to the bare minimum.
I think the point is that only developers on Macs need to ignore them. If they properly do so, these files will never appear on other developer’s machines, and they therefore don’t need them in .gitignore.
It’s not that straightforward to ignore files in git without adding them to a local .gitignore, though.
Global .gitignore exists, but I just had to look it up again to refresh my memory – chances are, junior devs or hobby developers will never even consider it as an option.
That said, arguably ignoring .DS_Storage should be the default on macOS builds of git.
I just teach people about global gitignores then they know. If someone were to commit something to an open source project, I'd reject it and teach them about it too. I'm all about the global gitignores. The ignore file can actually act as a form of documentation if kept tidy. It's a single source of truth of all the artifacts an app can produce.
he must meant that you block something at its origin: dsstore managed by the OS, you block it at system level; `.o` produced by the project stuff, block it at project repo level.
I must admit that my viewpoint is coloured by the fact that I work on repos where most devs use OSX.
I can do the principled thing as you describe it. And then I can be angry every time a new dev arrives who doesn't have their computer correctly set up yet, or someone reinstalls their machine, or anything like that.
Or I can do the pragmatic thing, add one extra line to the .gitignore file and forget about it forever.
I can see an argument for this being semantically correct, but in practice I think it's preferable to have the repo checkout in the closest configuration to correct for new developers who will start contributing.
And, for what it's worth, all developers need to ignore .DS_Store files regardless if Finder creates it or it gets placed in when you unzip something created on a Mac, for instance.
In the best case, you spend extra time needlessly denying PRs and bothering people who already likely don't know git well enough to cleanly fix their commit. In the case of a repo large enough that you're not the only person approving PRs, I'd say it's almost inevitable that they eventually slip through.
Just my 2¢ from experience working in the industry.
