Should pub/media directories be included in the gitignore?

Question

I've inherited a Magento 2 codebase and the .gitignore file matches the one in the Magento 2.3 repo.

I downloaded the latest copy of the database and the /pub/media folder from the live site for my local dev environment so I could get as close a match as possible.

However, I now have a lot of directories in /pub/media that Git is picking up as untracked files. I feel like I should be gitignore-ing these directories as they aren't currently in the codebase, but I don't want to do anything that will upset the live site on deployment.

These are the directories being picked up by Git:

/pub/media/amasty/
/pub/media/amlabel/
/pub/media/back/
/pub/media/cache/
/pub/media/css_secure/
/pub/media/custom_options/
/pub/media/email/
/pub/media/gbu0/
/pub/media/images/
/pub/media/js/
/pub/media/khxc/
/pub/media/klevu_images/
/pub/media/mbimages/
/pub/media/meigee/
/pub/media/og_image/
/pub/media/xmlconnect/

It looks like most of these have been created by/for the theme that has been used.

Should I add these to the gitignore?

Answer 1

Formally, most of the Magento projects does not include media in their code base .

Only add which requirements by theme or Magento editor related.

/pub/media/*.*
!/pub/media/.htaccess
/pub/media/attribute/*
!/pub/media/attribute/.htaccess
/pub/media/analytics/*
/pub/media/catalog/*
!/pub/media/catalog/.htaccess
/pub/media/customer/*
!/pub/media/customer/.htaccess
/pub/media/downloadable/*
!/pub/media/downloadable/.htaccess
!/pub/media/favicon/*
/pub/media/import/*
!/pub/media/import/.htaccess
/pub/media/logo/*
/pub/media/custom_options/*
!/pub/media/custom_options/.htaccess
!/pub/media/theme/*
/pub/media/theme_customization/*
!/pub/media/theme_customization/.htaccess
!/pub/media/wysiwyg/*
!/pub/media/wysiwyg/.htaccess
/pub/media/tmp/*
!/pub/media/tmp/.htaccess
/pub/media/captcha/*

Above is an example Magento standard list for gitignore.

As per your list /pub/media/cache/ and /pub/media/css_secure/ and /pub/media/js/ must be addedin ignore.

Other any folder which is related to cache, should be added to ignore the list

Suppose , /pub/media/amasty/ folder has a cache folder /pub/media/amasty/cache, then i suggest that you should add /pub/media/amasty/cache at ignore list.

Simple word,call is yours which folder you want to add at ignore list.

Should add static files(Noncodes files) folders/files to ignore list.