---
title: "Copied files"
description: "Branching off copies everything git ignores from the source into the new worktree: vendor/, generated files, configuration, uploads."
canonical: copied-files.html
navigation-title: "Copied files"
---

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# Copied files

Branching off copies everything git ignores from the source into the new
worktree: `vendor/`, generated files, configuration, uploads. That is what
makes a fork run without a build in a project this add-on has never seen.

The shipped configurations leave `var`, `typo3temp`, `.vscode` and
`.idea` behind. The first request rebuilds them, and a compiled container
carried into a checkout of other code fails on the first service it asks for,
with nothing in the message about the directory that was copied. `.git`,
`.ddev` and the directory the worktrees live in never travel, whatever is
written; a recipe that names one of them is refused.

A project changes the answer under `copy`:

.ddev/branchery.yaml

```yaml
copy:
  except:
    - node_modules       # rebuilt by "npm ci", and the size of a small country
    - .build/var
```

`except` keeps the ordinary answer and takes these out of it, on top of the
defaults above. A path may lie inside something that does travel: `.build/var`
leaves the caches out of a `.build/` that is otherwise copied whole. Paths
are read from the root of the checkout and mean that one place, not every
directory of that name down the tree.

Written beside `profile:`, this list stands instead of the shipped one rather
than adding to it, so a project that wants `var` carried after all writes
`except: []` — or names the ones it does want left behind and leaves `var`
out of them.

A list says the whole thing instead:

```yaml
copy:
  - .build
  - config
  - fileadmin
```

Then exactly those travel, whether git ignores them or not, and nothing else
does.