git - Comments in .gitignore?

Question

Can you write comments in a .gitignore file?

If so, should the line be preceded with a # or some other indicator?

Answer 1

Yes, you may put comments in there. They however must start at the beginning of a line.

cf. http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#Ignoring-Files

The rules for the patterns you can put in the .gitignore file are as follows:
- Blank lines or lines starting with # are ignored.
[…]

The comment character is #, example:

# no .a files
*.a