Generator Ignore File¶

Authors

Matt Cockayne

Date

31 March 2026

Status

IMPLEMENTED

Overview¶

When regenerating a project, the GTB generator walks all embedded skeleton assets and either writes or prompts to overwrite each file. Users who have replaced or heavily customised certain generated files (e.g. CI workflows, Dockerfiles, linting configs) are forced to decline overwrites every time they regenerate. There is no way to permanently mark files as "hands off."

The .gtb/ignore file lets users declare glob patterns for files the generator should skip during generation and regeneration. Ignored files are never written or prompted — but their current on-disk content is still hashed and recorded in the manifest so that hash tracking remains complete.

Design Decisions¶

Gitignore-like syntax: The format is familiar to all Go developers. Comments (#), blank lines, negation (!), and glob patterns work as expected.

Hash tracking preserved: Ignored files still have their on-disk hash recorded in the manifest. This means the generator knows the file exists and what state it's in, even though it won't touch it. This enables future features like drift detection.

Force flag does not override ignore: The --force flag bypasses conflict prompts, but it does NOT bypass ignore rules. If a file is in .gtb/ignore, it stays ignored regardless of flags.

No external dependencies: Pattern matching uses filepath.Match and strings.Cut from the standard library. No gitignore parsing library is needed.

Backwards compatible: Missing .gtb/ignore is valid — the generator behaves exactly as before.

Implementation¶

Files¶

Integration Points¶

• generateSkeletonTemplateFiles and walkSkeletonAssets accept *IgnoreRules
• Before processing each file, rules.IsIgnored(relPath) is checked
• If ignored: hashIgnoredFile reads the on-disk content and records the hash
• If not ignored: normal rendering/writing flow
• LoadIgnoreRules is called in both generateSkeletonFiles (initial generation) and regenerateSkeletonFiles (regeneration)