February 22, 2026
Drama inside the dotfiles
Git's Magic Files
The secret files steering your code—and your team’s sanity
TLDR: A guide to Git’s “magic files” sparked big feelings: fans say .gitignore and .gitattributes tame chaos, skeptics roast LFS complexity and submodule nightmares. The community is split between practical fixes and past trauma, with bonus wars over line endings and whether to force-merge lockfiles.
Developers are buzzing over the reveal of Git’s “magic files” that quietly dictate what gets tracked, merged, and displayed. The post breaks down the big four—.gitignore (what to skip), .gitattributes (how to treat files), .lfsconfig (big file rules), and .gitmodules (plug-in projects)—but the comments turned it into reality TV for programmers. One camp cheers the clarity: “Finally, a map for the minefield.” Another camp calls it damage control for decades of pain. The loudest fight? Line endings—Windows vs. Mac/Linux. “CRLF vs LF is the Cold War of code,” joked one user, while another swore .gitattributes “saved our marriage and our merges.”
There’s spicy debate over lockfiles too: fans defend “merge=ours” on package-locks to avoid chaos, critics label it “sweeping conflict under the rug.” Git LFS (for large files like images and design assets) drew heat: some say it’s essential; others call it a “hotel you can check into but never leave,” citing migrations and broken pulls. Submodules? Oh, the drama. Veterans warn they’re “a rite of passage—and regret,” while a few insist they’re fine if you actually read the .gitmodules. Meanwhile, people gleefully shame the forever-ignored .DS_Store and Thumbs.db, and one crowd confesses to accidentally committing .env secrets—cue mass key resets. For extra spice, folks mock devs gaming GitHub language stats with linguist tags. Receipts: gitignore docs, gitattributes, LFS, and GitHub templates.
Key Points
- •.gitignore defines ignore patterns and is evaluated in order across per-directory files, .git/info/exclude, and a global ignore set by core.excludesFile.
- •.gitattributes configures filters, diff/merge drivers, line-ending normalization, binary handling, and can override GitHub Linguist’s language detection.
- •GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea respect .gitignore in their web UIs; GitHub provides language/framework .gitignore templates.
- •.lfsconfig stores repository-wide Git LFS settings (e.g., endpoint URL) and is read automatically; file patterns for LFS live in .gitattributes.
- •When adding LFS patterns after files were committed, running git lfs migrate is required to rewrite history and move those files into LFS.