If you have node installed, uou can run [`npx gitignore`][1] to generate `.gitignore` files:

```bash
npx gitignore VisualStudio
```

[1]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/gitignore

I've installed Git to do some development using Visual Studio 2008. Most of the work will be new development but we do have some old projects from prior to VS2005 that I want to bring over into the new repository.  There is an existing thread about general [VS/Git integration][1] but my question is limited to the .gitignore file and Visual Studio.

My question has two parts: 

- What entries should be included in the .gitignore file to cover the Visual Studio specific files like binaries, assemblies, debug files, etc?  Some were covered in the thread mentioned above but is there a comprehensive set?

- In what situations have you needed to exclude files globally, or for a single repository, or using the environment variable?

I already know the HOW. Here is an excerpt from the Git [user-manual][2] on ignoring files.

> If you wish the exclude patterns to
> affect only certain repositories
> (instead of every repository for a
> given project), you may instead put
> them in a file in your repository
> named .git/info/exclude, or in any
> file specified by the
> core.excludesfile configuration
> variable. Some git commands can also
> take exclude patterns directly on the
> command line. See [gitignore(5)][3] for the
> details.



  [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/507343/using-git-with-visual-studio
  [2]: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html
  [3]: http://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore