A pattern-based ignore generator.

Lala is a command line program for generating common, pattern-based ignore files. Lala leverages the well-built templates provided in the github/gitignore repository using the the GitHub API. Lala was inspired by karan/joe.

Lala is meant to be installed as a global npm module, making the program lala available everywhere in your terminal:

$ npm install -g lala

For command line help:

$ lala help

To get a list of available ignore templates:

# Lists available ignore templates
$ lala list

Lala can output both individual and combinations of ignore templates. Lala outputs them as console messages which can be piped into another file for use.

Command line pattern:

lala ignore <template...>

As a real-world example, let's build an ignore file for a Git repository containing a Visual Studio solution with ASP.NET/C# projects that leverage node/npm tooling:

# Create a file containing the ignore pattern templates for a Git repository
$ lala ignore visualstudio node > .gitignore

# Or create the file by individually appending each ignore pattern template
$ lala ignore visualstudio >> .gitignore
$ lala ignore node >> .gitignore

# Or use a Mercurial repository instead
$ lala visualstudio node > .hgignore

Lala uses the GitHub API to pull down the latest templates from the github/gitignore repository. The GitHub API allows up to 60 requests per hour, unauthenticated, for a given IP address. In all but the most extreme usage scenarios you would have a difficult time exceeding that rate limit with Lala alone.

To see your rate limit for the current configuration of Lala:

# Check your rate limit
$ lala limit

In the event that you need to increase your rate limit beyond what is provided anonymously, you can set your GitHub username and password or API token:

# Run the configuration wizard
$ lala config

# Or bypass the configuration wizard and send the values by command line parameters
$ lala config -u <GitHub_username> -p <GitHub_password_or_token>