.gitignore with wildcards for filenames

Question

My .gitignore file has the following entries. I am trying multiple things here as I can't seem to get my file ignored;

WinAppSetup/*.exe
/WinAppSetup/*.exe
WinAppSetup/setup.exe
**/WinAppSetup/setup.exe

When I run git status from git bash, I still see;

    modified:   WinAppSetup/setup.exe

What entry in my .gitignore will allow me to ignore this file?

After editing .gitignore, do I need to close and re-open git bash to have the .gitignore file re-read?

UPDATE

As per user2407038's comment, the issue was that the file already existed in the repository. I was able to remove the file locally, stage and then commit those changes and update my remote. A new build of the application then successfully ignored the file.

It seems I can also update my .gitignore file without having to close and re-open git bash too.

Solution

.gitignore won't ignore a file that's already in your repository. You have to first remove the file for your repository.

You can remove a file from the repository without deleting the actual file with git rm --cached.

git rm --cached WinAppSetup/setup.exe

In this sort of situation I usually have the new .gitignore entry and the removal of the ignored file from the repository in the same commit.

Comments

[Mr Moose]

I'm accepting this answer, as it seems to do what I need, but the suggestion provided by @user2407038 is what really helped me fix this specific issue.