Does .clineignore work? cant get it right

[fersarr]

Plugin Type

VSCode Extension

Cline Version

3.46.1

What happened?

Hi! Thanks for cline, it has become my go to agent for everything! A small question on ignores: I have tried lots of variations of .clineignore but I can't get it to work properly, it keeps detecting my DB dir's changes as shown in the screenshot, am I doing something wrong? Everytime I click "see the changes/diff" it includes lots of changes in my DB from regular usage (which also make it slow to open)

Dir structure:

.clineignore and .gitignore are at the same level, in the same dir:

/Users/yyy/workspace/xxx_web/.gitignore
/Users/yyy/workspace/xxx_web/.clineignore

# The DB files are at
/Users/yyy/workspace/xxx_web/xxx_container/xxx/postgres_data/base


# VS Code exporer is open at
/Users/yyy/workspace/xxx_web/

My .clineignore has:

postgres_data/
postgres_data/base/
base/
**/postgres_data/**
postgres_data/**
xxx_container/xxx/postgres_data/
xxx_container/xxx/postgres_data/**

Steps to reproduce

Provider/Model

No response

System Information

No response

[linear]

CLINE-1061

[github-actions]

Thanks for reporting this, and glad Cline has been helpful!

This is a case where two separate exclusion systems are at play, which can be confusing:

The Issue

The "see the changes/diff" button uses Cline's checkpoint system, which has its own exclusion list that's separate from .clineignore. Looking at the code, the checkpoint exclusions are defined in src/integrations/checkpoints/CheckpointExclusions.ts and include patterns for database files like *.db, but they don't specifically handle postgres data directories.

Your .clineignore file does work for controlling which files Cline's LLM can read/access via tool calls (like read_file, list_files, execute_command). However, it doesn't affect the checkpoint diff viewer, which tracks all file changes in your workspace.

What's Happening

When you click "see the changes/diff", Cline's checkpoint tracker is showing changes in your postgres data directory because:

1. The checkpoint system uses its own hardcoded exclusion list, not .clineignore
2. While it excludes common database file extensions (*.db, *.sqlite, etc.), it doesn't have patterns for postgres data directories specifically

Workarounds

For now, there are a few options:

1. Move the postgres data directory outside your workspace - If your DB is running in Docker, mount the volume outside your project directory
2. Add the directory to .gitignore - The checkpoint system respects .gitignore patterns since it uses git under the hood. Try adding postgres_data/ to your .gitignore
3. Disable checkpoints if you don't need the diff/restore features - You can do this in Cline settings

For Maintainers

The checkpoint exclusions should ideally respect .clineignore patterns, or at least the .gitignore file in the workspace. The current implementation in CheckpointExclusions.ts has hardcoded patterns but doesn't integrate with ClineIgnoreController.

Relevant code paths:

• src/integrations/checkpoints/CheckpointExclusions.ts - Hardcoded exclusion patterns
• src/integrations/checkpoints/CheckpointTracker.ts:396 - getDiffSet() that generates the diff
• src/core/ignore/ClineIgnoreController.ts - The .clineignore handling (not used by checkpoints)

SME	Reason
@canvrno	Primary recent contributor to checkpoint code, authored #8328 (exclusion improvements)
@saoudrizwan	Authored checkpoint error handling improvements in #8230

Possible Duplicates

• .clineignore does not work as expected (security issue) #7645 - Related .clineignore issue (but for @/folder mentions, not checkpoints)
• Feature Request: Configurable File Listing in Environment Details #4364 - Consolidated tracking issue for .clineignore improvements - may be the best place to track this enhancement

The workaround of adding to .gitignore should help immediately since the checkpoint system uses git's exclude mechanism.

[fersarr]

My .gitignore already ignores the DB dirs and that works fine: **/postgres_data/** but the cline checkpoint system does not

[saoudrizwan]

hi thanks for reporting! that's unexpected for something in your gitignore to not be respected by the checkpoint system. was **/postgres_data/** added before or after you started using cline in your project?

[saoudrizwan]

i'm thinking that our shadow git repo started tracking **/postgres_data/** before it was added to the user's gitignore, and this has exposed a flaw in our checkpoint system - that it does not retroactively remove any newly added patterns to gitignore (or at the very least start respecting it moving forward in new commits)

[fersarr]

Thanks for looking. I'm 95% sure **/postgres_data/** was in .gitignore before I started using Cline, but I cannot be sure. If you have something in mind, I can try them to reset/wipe the checkpoint system tracking (or whatever you think is good).

[saoudrizwan]

Let's try clearing out the checkpoint data and see if that helps. Close VS Code first, then navigate to Cline's global storage folder:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Code\User\globalStorage\saoudrizwan.claude-dev\
• Linux: ~/.config/Code/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/

Delete the checkpoints folder inside there (you can rm -rf it or just drag to trash), then restart VS Code. This wipes the shadow git repos Cline uses for checkpoints and forces it to recreate them fresh.

If you're using Cursor instead of VS Code, the path would be ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/ instead.

Let me know if that fixes things! 🤞

[fersarr]

OH! looks like that might have worked! I'll keep an eye on this and report back in the next days! Thank you very much! What a difference this makes, it was driving me crazy :D

[saoudrizwan]

@canvrno looks like my hunch was right, our checkpoint system should be syncing with the user's gitignore - perhaps we run some git operation on new tasks checking for new gitignore contents and if we notice delta to stop tracking the newly ignored files

[canvrno]

@saoudrizwan created ENG-1443

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for 60 days with no activity.