Retrospectively applying .hgignore file to Mercurial repository

Question

Is it possible to stop tracking a bunch of files in the repo, apply the file in some way retrospectively .hgignore?

I know that a file that is already being tracked will continue even if you add a rule to a file .hgignorethat matches it

Is there a workaround to this?

In other words, I want to add the file .hgignoreto my repo and then return the repo to stop tracking all files matching.hgignore

Answer 1

There is no automatic way to do this.

hg forget PATTERN . hg help fileset hg help patterns , .

, , , hg help fileset:

hg forget "set:hgignore() and not ignored()"

EDIT: , hg convert , .