Overview

Ignore backups, build files, et al. in Emacs.

• Quickstart
• Explanation
• Compatibility and Requirements
• Notes
• Bugs

Quickstart

(require 'dired-x)
 
(require 'ignoramus)
 
(ignoramus-setup)    ; sets vc-directory-exclusion-list,
                     ; dired-omit-files, ido-ignore-directories,
                     ; completion-ignored-extensions, etc.
 
;; execute C-x C-j   ; backups and build files now omitted from dired

Explanation

Every library has its own method for defining uninteresting files to ignore. Ignoramus puts the listing of ignorable-file patterns and the logic for applying those patterns together in one place.

To use ignoramus, place the ignoramus.el library somewhere Emacs can find it, and add the following to your ~/.emacs file:

(require 'ignoramus)
(ignoramus-setup)

By default, ignoramus-setup will apply every action that it knows about for ignoring files. Currently these are

comint
completions
dired
eshell
grep
ido
nav
pcomplete
projectile
shell
speedbar
vc

You can specify a shorter list of actions as an argument

(ignoramus-setup '(pcomplete shell ido))

or customize the value of ignoramus-default-actions.

Compatibility and Requirements

GNU Emacs version 25.1-devel     : not tested
GNU Emacs version 24.5           : not tested
GNU Emacs version 24.4           : yes
GNU Emacs version 24.3           : yes
GNU Emacs version 23.3           : yes
GNU Emacs version 22.2           : yes, with some limitations
GNU Emacs version 21.x and lower : unknown

No external dependencies

Notes

Three functions are provided to be called from Lisp:

ignoramus-boring-p
ignoramus-register-datafile
ignoramus-matches-datafile

Bugs

The one-size-fits-all approach necessarily makes this library a blunt instrument.