Which option should I choose when executing "i' (Ignore) on Magit? Should Gitignore be shared in private, at the top level or in subdirectory?

Question

I keep my emacs init file under version control. See the GitHub.

I have the things installed from ELPA also unver version control. Which is annoying. After executing Magit status, I have:

Head:     main TAB auto-complete in CIDER! Beyond just indeting
Merge:    origin/main TAB auto-complete in CIDER! Beyond just indeting
Tag:      emamcs-from-scratch-4-fechado (134)

Untracked files (37)
.emacs.d/elpa/all-the-icons-20220620.249/
.emacs.d/elpa/all-the-icons-ivy-rich-20220613.1804/
.emacs.d/elpa/all-the-icons-ivy-rich-20220613.304/
.emacs.d/elpa/cider-20220531.616/
.emacs.d/elpa/cider-20220619.1106/
.emacs.d/elpa/compat-28.1.1.3.signed
.emacs.d/elpa/compat-28.1.1.3/
.emacs.d/elpa/dash-20220602.2113/
.emacs.d/elpa/dash-20220608.1931/
.emacs.d/elpa/doom-modeline-20220601.407/
.emacs.d/elpa/doom-modeline-20220613.932/
.emacs.d/elpa/doom-modeline-20220620.1428/
.emacs.d/elpa/doom-themes-20220609.1038/
.emacs.d/elpa/doom-themes-20220619.2105/
.emacs.d/elpa/f-20220602.1136/
.emacs.d/elpa/f-20220608.943/
.emacs.d/elpa/git-commit-20220607.1403/
.emacs.d/elpa/git-commit-20220615.1159/
.emacs.d/elpa/helm-core-20220605.411/
.emacs.d/elpa/helm-core-20220607.1243/
.emacs.d/elpa/helm-core-20220617.518/
.emacs.d/elpa/ivy-20220529.1130/
.emacs.d/elpa/ivy-prescient-20220601.1652/
.emacs.d/elpa/magit-20220605.1458/
.emacs.d/elpa/magit-20220607.1443/
.emacs.d/elpa/magit-20220618.550/
.emacs.d/elpa/magit-section-20220615.1159/
.emacs.d/elpa/prescient-20220601.1652/
.emacs.d/elpa/projectile-20220530.615/
.emacs.d/elpa/projectile-20220612.2102/
.emacs.d/elpa/slime-20220609.1831/
.emacs.d/elpa/slime-20220615.1502/
.emacs.d/elpa/vterm-20220613.1614/
.emacs.d/elpa/with-editor-20220608.1017/
.emacs.d/recentf~
.emacs.d/session.10829986ea52a53419165460313069280700000013410103
.emacs.d/session.10a58b146dd5624d0b165452671176498200000014850106

I want to ignore them. Thus, I do i (Ignore). After pressing i, Magit askes me if I would like to share at toplevel, at subdirectory, or privately.

I tried reading the documentation using ? and reading the manual, but it is still unclear how I should proceed in this case.

What should I do?

Thanks

Answer 1

Top-level is the folder at the root of your git repo (probably .emacs.d in yr case).

Choose t to write the ignores to .emacs.d/.gitignore which is probably what you want. But rather than hit i 37 times, it is probably better to put a single line in .emacs.d/.gitignore that reads:

elpa/

This solves the problem of not wanting to see elpa churn once and for all.