Gitignore for all files in folders and subfolders

Question

I have a .gitignore file in this directory

/Users/keatooon/pos_dev

I want to ignore all files in this folder and also files in subfolders of this directory /Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www:

/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default
/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default/app
/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default/dist
/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default/images
/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default/ionic
/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default/index.html

/Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/skinLoader.html

How to do it?

I've tried to add all these in .gitignore file but it couldn't work:

apps/POS/ipad/native/www/default/

apps/POS/ipad/native/www/*

Reason for downvoting please? **Newbie in git – user1872384 Oct 08 '16 at 05:04 — user1872384, Oct 08 '16 at 05:04
I will be more careful next time @VonC... thx... – user1872384 Oct 08 '16 at 07:50 — user1872384, Oct 08 '16 at 07:50
I have edited my answer to fix `MPOS` into `POS`. – VonC Oct 08 '16 at 08:03 — VonC, Oct 08 '16 at 08:03

VonC · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-16T11:36:18.663

The rule to remember with gitignore:

It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded.

I want everything in /Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www to be ignored.

That would then simply be a /Users/keatooon/pos_dev/.gitignore with:

/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/

(note the trailing slash, to ignore the folder content)

Make sure the content of that folder was not already tracked (because in that case, any modification would still show up in the git status)

Check that a file is correctly ignored by that rule with:

git check-ignore -v /Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/<aFile>

If not, type:

git rm -r --cached /Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www/
git add .
git commit -m "remove apps/POS/ipad/native/www from repo"

The files on the disk will remain, but you will record in the history of the repo the deletion of www/, whose content will then be ignored.

user692942 adds in the comments:

I did not want the full relative path to the route of the repo, so I used
**/folder/subfolder/ which worked.

From gitignore man page:

"A leading ** followed by a slash means match in all directories. For example, **/foo matches file or directory foo anywhere, the same as pattern foo. **/foo/bar matches file or directory bar anywhere that is directly under directory foo."

hmm... tried but couldn't work...I want everything in /Users/keatooon/pos_dev/apps/POS/ipad/native/www to be ignored... — user1872384, Oct 08 '16 at 08:07
got it....The files are already being track in the current repo... removing them does the trick... — user1872384, Oct 09 '16 at 00:40
Didn't want the full relative path to the route of the repo, so I used `**/folder/subfolder/` which worked. "A leading `**` followed by a slash means match in all directories. For example, `**/foo` matches file or directory `foo` anywhere, the same as pattern `foo`. `**/foo/bar` matches file or directory `bar` anywhere that is directly under directory `foo`." - Ref https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore — user692942, Mar 16 '23 at 09:27

Gitignore for all files in folders and subfolders

1 Answers1