Why is config/database.yml included in the .gitignore file by default for my Rails app?

Question

Why would config/database.yml be included in the .gitignore file by default? This small item cost me an hour or two.

The way I stumbled into this trouble:

• I thought I was confused about how git handled reset and revert.
• I had been experimenting with code changes that affected config/database.yml
• I didn't like the result, so I abandoned the changes.
• It was odd, because it seemed I could not checkout an unedited version of config/database.yml
• I then spent way too much time trying to figure out if I was misunderstanding git's reset and merge commands.
• Turns out config/database.yml was included in the .gitignore file by default.

Not sure why. Cost me an hour or so of fiddling with reset and merge options, when it turns out I wasn't even tracking the file. As I write this, I realize I am not entirely sure when .gitignore was written/modified to include config/database.yml

Is there some reason it should be there?

Answer 1

If you are seeing a file for which 'git reset' and 'git revert' don't seem to have any effect, you may find the file is listed in the .gitignore file in your project root.

Answer 2

That file usually won't contain much interesting content for tracking in a version control system.

But, it will often contain passwords for connecting to a database server, which should not be made public.

It will also often contain information which needs to differ between different working copies, different user or database names for a database server, different paths to a SQLite file. These differences would make it impossible to track this file in the version control system.