Comment by rmunn

I have a habit of writing myself notes in various .txt files, and then not cleaning them up often enough so they end up cluttering my `git status` view. I ended up with a solution not mentioned in the article: create a `scratch` directory, and a `scratch/.gitignore` file containing just one line: `*`. This makes Git ignore everything in the scratch directory, including that same .gitignore file — so I never accidentally check it into Git, and don't end up pushing my personal .gitignore settings onto my coworkers.

Of course, I could have used .git/info/exclude for that, and not risked accidentally adding my `scratch` directory with `git add -A` or something. So I (re-)learned something (which I'd known about but forgotten) today.

But as a reminder to anyone else who had forgotten this: .gitignore files are processed throughout the repo, not just at the top level. You can sprinkle them throughout the repo structure for finer-grained control, which may come in handy in some circumstances.