difference between git ignore and untrack
git, gitignore
Solution
If you create a file in your repository named .gitignore, git will use its rules when looking at files to commit. git will not ignore a file that was already tracked (i.e. was in the repo) before a rule was added to this file to ignore it. File must be un-tracked (removed from the repo) using
git rm --cached filename
The command will stop tracking but keep the file there intact.
Problem
What's the difference between ignore a folder and untrack in git? I need to remove some folders from my git repository and I am working in Netbeans with the git plugins and put by mistake the build, dist, and nbproject folders in my repository and now I need to remove those folders.