diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
deleted file mode 100644
index 7e9e15820297..000000000000
--- a/.gitignore
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,22 +0,0 @@
-# This file is for zig-specific build artifacts.
-# If you have OS-specific or editor-specific files to ignore,
-# such as *.swp or .DS_Store, put those in your global
-# ~/.gitignore and put this in your ~/.gitconfig:
-#
-# [core]
-#     excludesfile = ~/.gitignore
-#
-# Cheers!
-# -andrewrk
-
-.zig-cache/
-zig-out/
-/release/
-/debug/
-/build/
-/build-*/
-/docgen_tmp/
-
-# Although this was renamed to .zig-cache, let's leave it here for a few
-# releases to make it less annoying to work with multiple branches.
-zig-cache/
diff --git a/lib/std/testing.zig b/lib/std/testing.zig
index b99542e7e57b..f5350f6add17 100644
--- a/lib/std/testing.zig
+++ b/lib/std/testing.zig
@@ -642,6 +642,9 @@ pub fn tmpDir(opts: std.fs.Dir.OpenOptions) TmpDir {
     };
 }
 
+/// This functions is to be used only in tests. When the two strings are not 
+/// equal, prints diagnostics to stderr to show exactly they are not equal,
+/// then returns a test expected equal error.
 pub fn expectEqualStrings(expected: []const u8, actual: []const u8) !void {
     if (std.mem.indexOfDiff(u8, actual, expected)) |diff_index| {
         if (@inComptime()) {