Can .gitignore files be named ? (e.g. xxx.gitignore)

Question

I would like to know whether it is possible to have named .gitignore files in a repository, such as:

Composer.gitignore
Node.gitignore

Both of the above examples are shown available in GitHub's gitignore template repository (perhaps this might be a bit misleading).

I have tried adding Composer.gitignore to my repository and it seems like the file is not read (I'm using SourceTree).

EDIT:

Adding relevant information added by Boldewyn that does not directly answer the question:

The page's README says:

A Collection of .gitignore templates and that's what it is: Only templates. If you want to use one, pick it, drop it in your repository and rename it to .gitignore.

git recognizes only two places for listing ignored files: .gitignore files in a folder/subfolder and the file .git/info/ignore. See git help gitignore for in-depth information.

Answer 1

The only way you could make a file not name .gitignore as a .gitignore file is:

• reference it directly

  git config --global core.excludesfile ~/myfile.gitignore
  

• generate it through a smudge script from a content filter driver.
  That second option is a bit convoluted, but would process all versionned <file>.gitignore and generate the final .gitignore.

Other than those two options, the .gitignore man page doesn't allow any other naming convention.