So I am using Jekyll Bootstrap, which is also available on GitHub, in order to build my blog (which is currently just full of filler content for development). One thing I noticed is that when running my local development server using the command
$ jekyll --server --auto
I am able to edit my markdown content and have it auto regenerate the local site while I am changing things. As far as I can tell this does not work for my CSS or for my templates. I also noticed that when I run the local server with the --auto flag Jekyll creates a directory called auto which stores what appears to be a static copy of my site's content. Jekyll-bootstrap comes with it's own .gitignore file set up for you which I assumed contained the auto directory. I see no reason to store this auto-regenerated content in the GitHub repository for my site, however, when I made a commit I noticed it added the entire auto directory. I opened up the .gitignore file and this is what it contains:
_site/*
_theme_packages/*
Thumbs.db
.DS_Store
!.gitkeep
.rbenv-version
.rvmrc
I am very new to Jekyll and Jekyll Bootstrap, and a little new to git. I am not sure if there is a reason why they wouldn't have an entry to ignore the auto directory. I was figuring I should add an entry for auto/*. Is there a reason I shouldn't do this? As far as I can tell there is no use for the auto directory for anyone that either downloading the site from the web or from its git repository?
You can put it in your gitignore file. When deploying your site, you'll generally build it into the _site directory and publish it somewhere (your own VPS, GitHub pages, etc).