If you are using Git as your version control system, you need a .gitignore file to keep all of those user specific files out of Git like the bin/obj directories. You could manually create and configure the .gitignore file but why do it yourself when others have already done it for you. A quick search and you will run across the gitignore repo where you could download a premade file but what about if you had a tool to do this for you?

This is where .NET CLI Global Tool dotnet-ignore comes into play. This tool allow you to easily see a list of preconfigured .gitignore files from this repo and then download the one you need.

The first thing you need to do is install the dotnet-ignore tool:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-ignore

Now that it is installed you can see the available commands by viewing the help:

dotnet-ignore -h

You will notice that there are two commands available: get and list.

When you run the list command it will show you all of the available .gitignore file

dotnet-ignore list

Once you find the one that you need in the list, you will run the get command to download it by using the -n parameter to specify the name.

dotnet-ignore get  -n "Git Ignore Name"

To download the Visual Studio .gitignore file run

dotnet-ignore get -n visualstudio.gitignore

By default the .gitignore file is placed into the directory that the command is run from. If you want it in a different directory use the -d parameter.

Just like that you have your .gitignore file. Way better than manually searching for it and downloading it.