Here is a solid .gitignore file that covers a lot of ground
You can edit your ~/.gitignore to apply this globally, or implement in in the project root
# Drupal # ########## sites/*.local docroot/sites/*.local sites/*/files sites/*/files/* files/* settings.php # Ignore paths that contain user-generated content. /sites/*/files /sites/*/private /files/* /cache # ** Only works in OSs that support newer versions of fnmatch (Bash 4+) /sites/default/**/files /sites/default/**/private # Packages # ############ *.7z *.dmg *.gz *.iso *.jar *.rar *.tar *.zip # Logs and databases # ###################### *.log *.sql # OS generated files # ###################### .DS_Store* ehthumbs.db Icon Thumbs.db ._* # Eclipse # ########### .project .buildpath .settings* # Vim generated files # ###################### *.un~ # SASS # ######## .sass-cache # MISC # ######## .idea .vagrant