From: Karsten Blees Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 21:36:29 GMT Subject: [PATCH 2/2] gitignore.txt: clarify recursive nature of excluded directories Message-ID: <527C07DD.9090809@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20131107205732.GA16564@sigill.intra.peff.net> Additionally, precedence of negated patterns is exactly as outlined in the DESCRIPTION section, we don't need to repeat this. Signed-off-by: Karsten Blees --- I also force-pushed to git://github.com/kblees/git.git kb/gitignore-doc. Documentation/gitignore.txt | 19 +++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt index f971960..205e80e 100644 --- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt +++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt @@ -79,8 +79,10 @@ PATTERN FORMAT - An optional prefix "`!`" which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become - included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will - override lower precedence patterns sources. + included again. It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent + directory of that file is excluded. Git doesn't list excluded + directories for performance reasons, so any patterns on contained + files have no effect, no matter where they are defined. Put a backslash ("`\`") in front of the first "`!`" for patterns that begin with a literal "`!`", for example, "`\!important!.txt`". @@ -182,6 +184,19 @@ Another example: The second .gitignore prevents Git from ignoring `arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`. +Example to exclude everything except a specific directory `foo/bar` +(note the `/*` - without the slash, the wildcard would also exclude +everything within `foo/bar`): + +-------------------------------------------------------------- + $ cat .gitignore + # exclude everything except directory foo/bar + /* + !/foo + /foo/* + !/foo/bar +-------------------------------------------------------------- + SEE ALSO -------- linkgit:git-rm[1], -- 1.8.4.msysgit.1