[Bug]: .gitignore is not respected

[er4hn]

Description

My .gitignore is not respected and a file listed in it keeps on coming up as part of a git diff.

Minimal Reproduction

Using obsidian, cause .obisidian/workspace-mobile.json to be written to. Observe that is shows up in "manual sync" as a file that needs to be synced. Observe that it is listed under .gitignore

Exception or Error

No response

[ViscousPot]

Hey, the gitignore setting is only for files that aren't yet tracked.

In your case, the repository already includes the file and so it continues to track and sync changes. This is just how git happens to work so I understand if it's a bit unintuitive. If you hit the unstage all button just above the setting, and hit sync, it should fix your changes, I believe. Let me know how it goes and I am happy to help further :)

[er4hn]

Thanks for replying VicousPot! I like the idea of syncing on a timer and I'm hoping to use your app.

Unfortunately what you're describing is not the behavior I am seeing. I did the following:

a) Unstaged the files in Git Sync
b) Confirmed in the manual sync window that nothing was present
c) Switched to the Obsidian app and switched the open file. No changes to files, just changing the file that is opened.
d) Went back to the manual sync window in Git Sync
e) Observed that a number of folders are now appearing under sync, not just .obsidian but a number of folders were present. I couldn't figure out how to go into the folders to see what files there were, but I did not observe any top level files (I have top level files in the repo) being flagged for manual sync.

(e) is what breaks my expectations. For contrast - I have the same repo on my (macbook) laptop with the same .gitignore. I can change the open files on my laptops Obsidian and observe that the workspace.json file changes. However when I did a git diff the changes to workspace.json do not appear for staging, nor do other random files.

[ViscousPot]

Can I confirm that you saw the large list in the manual sync dialog, after changing the workspace.json but before doing a "sync all"? If so, that's again, expected but slightly unintuitive behaviour.

When you unstage all, manual sync will act like it doesn't know which files are and aren't already synced, which is why it's showing you every file that can be synced in the repo at once. This should start only showing the files changed after a "sync all" because that includes a stage all as part of the process.

I imagine the proper solution here would be to have an unstage all AND a stage all button so that you can hit both and manual sync would behave as expected. I need to do some testing and generally more work on the gitignore experience because others have already been confused by it.

Please do let me know any suggestions or corrections you have and I'll update you when I have more info :) 🙏🏾

[er4hn]

Thanks for explaining, this is super confusing to me. I'm trying to explain it:

• Manual Sync tries to figure out what to sync with upstream, but it doesn't stage, it shows everything that can be synced. But it doesn't show files, it just lists folders.
• When I select the eraser in Manual Sync it asks if I want to discard everything and this cannot be reversed. What does that mean?
• I tried to switch to "sync changes" but that thinks for a few moments that flashes a brief notification that I think says "too many errors" then immediately goes away.
  • if I close GitSync then reopen it (this is on Android) it shows a popup saying "an error occured too many redirectors or authentication replays: class=Http (34)". The backtrace is 18 layers deep where 0 - 16 are unknown and then it's a managled name for pthread_startPv._uniq.####

I think I get what you're doing but I would try to be way less clever about it. You want to be able to sync files on the local git repo with upstream. So you'd just want to:

• Have ways to stage/un-stage files, i.e. automatic or manual. I think your sync mechanism is doing way more than that and that is where it is getting weird.
• Show the files being staged/unstaged, not just directories (is that a bug?)
• Be able to choose if you pull with merge commits or rebase. Probably per repo as a setting.
• Once there are no more files in the working directory, push to remote, then pull from remote.

[ViscousPot]

Hi, I appreciate you clarifying. I'm also a little confused on the behaviour here because it's not what I'M expecting either.

• so the reason files might not be showing is because the manual sync dialog is probably not recursing folders, so it should list folders but not their contents (need to figure this one out)
• the eraser is to discard changes since the last sync. It doesn't pull in changes though, so it basically undoes any changes in manual sync. It's a little confusing here because the unstage is showing all files, so it's unclear what it would roll back to
• that error you describe is one I see with GitHub, but it often doesn't cause any real issues and isn't something I've been able to pinpoint the cause of

By the way, a new update has gone out that introduces client mode, and a more advanced manual style dialog ("Stage & Commit")

• The sync mechanism only stages all as part of the process, but that's probably what's still causing the weirdness. As mentioned above, the new option does allow you to stage and unstage files specifically, which might be better?
• described this above, but likely a bug yes 👍🏾
• can you elaborate on this more? Sounds definitely doable but I'm not clear on the difference for the user 🙏🏾
• I think this is vaguely what's currently happening.

I think in general, the weirdness you're seeing is unique to what currently happens in the app when you unstage all. I'm going to look into this and see what can be changed.

Also just want to point out that when I refer to git operations like unstage all, it can't be assumed that it behaves the same way as git does. I'm using a reimplementation of git, so sometimes I can incorrectly implement or misuse something that seems basic causing these issues.

[er4hn]

Thanks for the details. I tried out client mode and it's not working for me. I don't see any error messages, it just stops doing anything. I'm not sure if I'm missing a pop-up or notification?

Some more thoughts / notes:

• I'm using gitlab, not github which is worth noting.
• For the failure to pull in client mode:
  • I checked under "Stage & Commit" and at first there is nothing there, now it looks like everything is there. Is there any way to see a diff and figure out what is trying to be synced?
  • I guess this explains why pull is failing - but understanding why an async process fails is kind of tricky. Is there any sort of error log one can look at later to see why an operation failed / succeeded?
  • "can you elaborate on this more? Sounds definitely doable but I'm not clear on the difference for the user" - Is this for the rebase vs merge? Merge adds new merge commits to the history, rebase does not.
  • "Also just want to point out that when I refer to git operations like unstage all, it can't be assumed that it behaves the same way as git does. I'm using a reimplementation of git, so sometimes I can incorrectly implement or misuse something that seems basic causing these issues." That makes it a little hard to predict what is going to happen 😅😅😅

[ViscousPot]

Can you share a screenshot of what "Stage & Commit" looks like and then what it looks like if you select all and stage all too?

I admit there's a bit of work that needs to be done on Manual Sync/Stage & Commit and I'm going to dedicate some time to it soon.

There are logs if you click on the grey circle (where the sync spinner shows). If you could share screenshots or snippets of that, it would be useful to see too.

Thanks for explaining the rebase/merge thing. I'll look into that and update here. I think it might be worth making a feature request here for me track progress on it separately though. Let me know if you disagree

And, yeah sadly I can't "just use git" otherwise this would be a lot easier 😄

[er4hn]

Stage & Commit starts off blank, then everything pops in, there's no loader, but it eventually shows up. If I stage everything then it just selects them. Sorry, can't share screenshots since I consider the file titles to be personal as well.

I did get some screenshots of the logs. There's quite a bit going on, unfortunately I could select text but none of the usual "copy" dialogs I'm used to on android showed up so I couldn't copy the log for you. One part I find odd is in reading the logs it seems to think everything is up to date. For reference I did this around 2025-09-19 1736 PT, but the logs:
a) Show that pushes failed - I'm not sure why it's trying to push? When I look at the changelog history it last made a commit a few days ago, not sure for what. That is shown with a blue striped background with an up arrow. Also not sure what to make of that.
b) It seems to think that pull's succeeded. This is also odd because this repo is several commits behind at this point.

[ViscousPot]

Thanks, this should all be very helpful. I'll update here when I've had a chance to look into this more 👍🏾