How To Not ignore based on keyword in .gitignore

Question

Because I'm using microsoft nuget, I want to ignore all the package directories in my projects (there are a huge number of these and those files are all temporary). Unfortunately, in the JavaScript library I also have in the same repository, I need the package directory. So, I have in my .gitignore

...
package
...

But, in my directory

/JavaScript/package/importantfiles

I want to not ignore this file.

How can I let all "package" get ignored, but in the directory /JavaScript/... I want package to be included in source control?

possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2820255/how-do-negated-patterns-work-in-gitignore — Frederic Henri, Sep 12 '15 at 07:24

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

Don't forget that:

It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded (*)
(*: unless certain conditions are met in git 2.8+, see below)

It means that you need to ignore package folder files in order to un-ignore one of those files:

package/*
!importantFile

Note that with git 2.8.x/2.9 (mid 2016?), it might be possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded if there is no wildcard in the path re-included.

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy (pclouds) is trying to add this feature:

commit 506d8f1 for git v2.7.0, reverted in commit 76b620d git v2.8.0-rc0
commit 5e57f9c git v2.8.0-rc0,... reverted(!) in commit 5cee3493 git 2.8.0.

So in your case, this would work:

/JavaScript/package
!/JavaScript/package/importantfiles

How To Not ignore based on keyword in .gitignore

1 Answers1