You can also add * to the ignore file and explicitly specify what to track, either by hand or by "hg add [fname]" in some sort of script. I track/sync my home

You can also add * to the ignore file and explicitly specify what to track, either by hand or by "hg add [fname]" in some sort of script. I track/sync my home directory with mercurial, and did that to keep it from scanning most of my drive for updates. (You can probably do the same with git.) (For the archives as much as you, though I hope it's useful.)