Putting a file in .gitignore does nothing if git already tracks it. I built a CLI to find the leftovers. (opens in new tab)

You added .env to .gitignore. You felt responsible. But three weeks later it's still in the repo, still pushed to GitHub, still in every clone — because adding a path to .gitignore does nothing to a file git already tracks. That's not a bug. It's documented behavior: .gitignore only stops untracked files from being added. Anything already committed keeps getting tracked, ignore rule or not. So the secrets, build artifacts, and 40 MB log files that were committed before someone wrote the rule ...