Git Version Large Sensitive Files but Only Locally

Question

I am looking to add version control to large sensitive data files which I have placed in the .gitignore file. Ex. My repository is structured like:

project/
    script1.py
    script2.py
    data/
        sensitive_large1.txt
        sensitive_large2.txt

With a .gitignore file:

data/

However, I still want to be able to version these sensitive files locally to track the changes made on them. I looked into git submodules but am not certain if this solves my problem. If I ran git init submodule inside the data directory would that be sufficient to track those files locally, or is there a better solution?

Answer 1

You don't need to (and probably you shouldn't) use submodules for this. But you can init new git repository in data directory. So you finally will have 2 repositories, not connected with each other:

1. Main repository in root of your project with everything except data directory (it should be ignored in gitignore).
2. Private repository in data directory with all sensitive data.

You're pushing to remote only changes from first repository, and second repository is only local.