[al_borland]

For those who live their whole life within Apple's walls, they will never see .DS_Store files, unless they use the Terminal. Finder (with hidden files shown) doesn't even show them anymore.

It is very ugly when files are shared from a Mac to people on Windows though. I think it gives a bad first impression for anyone who might be thinking of transitioning to the Mac.

[nathan_douglas]

They pop up in code repositories too, depending on contents and whether the engineer in question noticed it.

[doomlaser]

absolutely essential to add a line for .DS_Store in every .gitignore, unfortunately.

[klodolph]

Enough to teach people to use a global git core.excludesfile, IMO.

Same place you should put rules for Emacs / Vim swap files.

[smix96]

Totally correct. Files which are unrelated to the project don't belong in .gitignore.

[al_borland]

This may be technically correct, and I do have .DS_Store in my global, but I also put it in projects, because I know not everyone on my team is going to do that. I add it to the .gitignore in projects to save me from other people junking up the project. It’s a lot easier to add some lines to a file than it is to micromanage the global file for every potential future contributor.

[Waterluvian]

This touches on something I've learned to be more mindful of: the "right answer" (especially to a techie) is often not the right answer in real world cases.

[klodolph]

I’m fine with the occasional .DS_Store getting added, because you can just remove it afterwards. Most of my work is either my own projects or at work, and whether people at work commit .DS_Store files is a question that touches on code reviews, company onboarding guides, etc.

Maybe the benefits / drawbacks would be different for an open-source project with a lot of contributors.

[tekknik]

Just add a like to your onboarding docs to teach what the global ignore file is and how to manage it. the have them add a line for DS_Store.

[account42]

It makes sense to add an ignore for .* though and then specifically unignore only those dotfiles/directories that you actully want checked in.

[tekknik]

or just ignore them globally once.

[beeboobaa3]

I've banned people before because they couldn't stop themselves from continuously uploading those useless ds files

[tekknik]

Seems like you have control issues.

[beeboobaa3]

Nah, those people have issues controlling their machines. It's fine if you upload useless spam a few times, but at some point you need to quit it because you're creating unnecessary work for others.

[tekknik]

Well I was trying to tell you nicely, but you’ll figure it out before long.

Banning someone because they commit a file you don’t like is definitely a sign of a controlling person.

[beeboobaa3]

Repeatedly. Besides, if you repeatedly pay such little care how can anything you do be trusted?