VS Code .gitignore template

The first rule is .vscode/* and not .vscode/, and that difference is the entire design. Ignoring the directory means git never looks inside it, so no later negation can bring anything back. Ignoring the contents means git still descends into the directory and the negations that follow are actually consulted. Anyone who writes .vscode/ and then wonders why their exceptions do nothing has hit exactly this.

The five files kept back are the ones with a genuine shared purpose. settings.json holds project settings such as the formatter, tab width and which files to hide. extensions.json recommends the extensions this project expects, so a new developer gets a prompt rather than a list in a README. tasks.json defines build commands and launch.json defines debug configurations, both of which encode knowledge about how the project runs.

The case against committing any of it is real too. Editor configuration is personal, a settings file can override preferences somebody deliberately set, and a repository that carries configuration for one editor implicitly asks everyone to use it. Teams that feel strongly usually ignore the directory entirely and move formatter settings into a tool config file that every editor reads.

The practical middle ground is what this template encodes: share the files that describe the project, ignore the files that describe your session. Everything not negated is the second kind, including per workspace state the editor writes as you work.

.history is the local file history directory an extension creates, holding a timestamped copy of every save. *.vsix is a packaged extension, which only appears in a repository that builds one. The history directory in particular grows without bound and duplicates work git already does, so it is one of the few editor artefacts that is a nuisance on disk as well as in a diff.