Exclamation mark in .gitignore doesn't work

Question

I have this file structure

aaafolder
└─ bbbfolder
   ├─ filename0.txt
   ├─ dddfolder
   │  ├─ filename1.txt
   │  └─ filename2.txt
   ├─ cccfolder
   └─ filename.txt

I want all the contents of the aaafolder folder to be hidden, but all files in the dddfolder folder must be present.

So in the repository, I want to get in Git this:

aaafolder
└─ bbbfolder
   └─ dddfolder
      ├─ filename1.txt
      └─ filename2.txt

My .gitignore looks like this:

/source/aaafolder/**
!/source/aaafolder/bbbfolder/dddfolder/*

However, the entire aaafolder folder is ignored

what is "source"? I don't see it in your folder charts... – Daemon Painter Jan 18 '21 at 14:47 — Daemon Painter, Jan 18 '21 at 14:47
@DaemonPainter, aaafolder is inside source folder – mrjbom2 Jan 18 '21 at 14:48 — mrjbom2, Jan 18 '21 at 14:48

Edward Thomson · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-18T15:25:36.793

34

Per the gitignore documentation, when negating:

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

This means that you'll need to ensure that the parent of dddfolder is included, even if the contents of dddfolder are not included.

In other words, you cannot use the ** to greedily match. You'll need to use a single-level wildcard. You'll need to exclude folders leading up to dddfolder and then include their contents.

aaafolder/*
!aaafolder/bbbfolder
aaafolder/bbbfolder/*
!aaafolder/bbbfolder/dddfolder

edited Jan 18 '21 at 15:25

answered Jan 18 '21 at 15:13

Edward Thomson

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But you *can* use the greedy wildcard match. Just follow it with a greedy wildcard directory exclusion, `!aaafolder/**/`. – jthill Jun 30 '22 at 08:02
So unexpected behaviour of git. – Sahin Jul 28 '22 at 11:03

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 18 '21 at 14:39

5

Try it like this :

aaafolder/*
!aaafolder/bbbfolder/*

answered Jan 18 '21 at 14:39

Antoine Kurka

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3
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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 18 '21 at 15:08

0

You also need to unignore every single subdirectory separately — bbbfolder/ and bbbfolder/dddfolder/

/source/aaafolder/
!/source/aaafolder/bbbfolder/
!/source/aaafolder/bbbfolder/dddfolder/
!/source/aaafolder/bbbfolder/dddfolder/*

answered Jan 18 '21 at 15:08

phd

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Exclamation mark in .gitignore doesn't work

3 Answers3

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