Git ignore except specific subdirectories

Question

I've looked at some examples on how to ignore everything except certain sub directories like so.

# Ignore Everything
foo/*
# Include sub directory
!foo/ccc/*

I have also tried:

# Ignore Everything
foo/*
# Include sub directory
!foo/ccc/

UPDATE

So the code above works, however trying to exclude a directory within another directory within another does not work. It only works on the parent directory and sub directory.

# Ignore Everything
foo/*
# Include sub directory
!foo/ccc/aaa/ddd/

After I include this in my gitingore, I run a git add --all and I dont see any the files in git status.

All help would be appreciated.

Do you have any files in `/foo/ccc`? Git will ignore empty directories. — mamapitufo, Mar 16 '16 at 14:19
I just tried with the second variation and it works in a test repository... is something else ignoring the `foo/` directory? — mamapitufo, Mar 16 '16 at 14:32
@mamapitufo I read that as well, but i'm unsure how other people have managed it. Take a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5533050/gitignore-exclude-folder-but-include-specific-subfolder — Errol Green, Mar 16 '16 at 14:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '16 at 14:58

You have to unignore every directory in the path that you wish to unignore. Something like the following should work in your case:

# Ignore everything in foo
foo/*
# Except the ccc subdir
!foo/ccc

# Ignore everything in ccc subdir
foo/ccc/*
# Except the aaa subsubdir
!foo/ccc/aaa

# Ignore everything in aaa subsubdir
foo/ccc/aaa/*
# Except the ddd subsubsubdir
!foo/ccc/aaa/ddd

It's important that the ignore rules end in /*, as that tells git to ignore everything in the folder, but not the folder itself, permitting us to add exceptions to the ignore rules for specific subdirectories.

Git ignore except specific subdirectories

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