How to I switch to a git branch that ignores files without deleting these files?

Question

I have branch master that ignores .idea in its .gitignore. From that, I created branch noIgnore that has no .gitignore.

I found that checkout master deletes .idea.

That's not the behavior I want. I want to keep .idea, just not track it, not on master. How do I do that?

Answer 1

You could stop tracking changes for a file in repo

git update-index --skip-worktree .idea

Since you're tracking it in the other branch, then when you make changes you'll want to start tracking changes again

git update-index --no-skip-worktree .idea

When you get tired of doing this manually, you could create a post-checkout hook if on master, stop tracking, else start tracking.