You just wrote a cpp program that reads it config from a file named conf.ini. As you don't want to bother adding all files manualy, you have decided to use .gitignore. You need to create a .gitignore file that will: - Ignore all files that end with a ~ (bakup files) - Ignore every files in the out directory but conf.ini In other words, once the .gitignore file written, the command `git add .` should only stage: - .gitignore - main.cpp - out/conf.ini