gitignore exclude folder but include specific subfolder

Question

I have the folder application  which I add to the  gitignore  Inside the  application  folder is the folder application language gr  How can I include this folder   I ve tried this  application   application language gr    with no luck

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So   since many programmers uses node   the use case which meets this question is to exclude node modules except one module module-a for example     node modules   node modules    node modules module-a

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I wanted to track jquery production js files and this worked   node modules    node modules jquery node modules jquery    node modules jquery dist

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In WordPress  this helped me   wp-admin  wp-includes   wp-content    wp-content plugins   wp-content plugins     wp-content plugins plugin-name    wp-content plugins plugin-name       wp-content plugins plugin-name

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I ve found only this actually works      node modules       node modules keep-dir

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The simplest and probably best way is to try adding the files manually  generally this takes precedence over  gitignore-style rules    git add  path to module   You may even want the -N intent to add flag  to suggest you will add them  but not immediately  I often do this for new files I   m not ready to stage yet      This a copy of an answer posted on what could easily be a duplicate QA  I am reposting it here for increased visibility   I find it easier not to have a mess of gitignore rules

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I often use this workaround in CLI where instead of configuring my  gitignore  I create a separate  include file where I define the  sub directories I want included in spite of directories directly or recursively ignored by  gitignore   Thus  I additionally use   git add  cat  include    during staging  before committing   To the OP  I suggest using a  include which has these lines    lt parent folder path gt  application language gr     NOTE  Using cat does not allow usage of aliases  within  include  for specifying  HOME  or any other specific directory   This is because the line homedir app1   when passed to git add using the above command appears as git add  homedir app1     and enclosing characters in single quotes      preserves the literal value of each character within the quotes  thus preventing aliases  such as homedir  from functioning  see Bash Single Quotes    Here is an example of a  include file I use in my repo here    home abhirup token txt  home abhirup  include  home abhirup  vim    home abhirup  viminfo  home abhirup  bashrc  home abhirup  vimrc  home abhirup  condarc

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Just another example of walking down the directory structure to get exactly what you want  Note  I didn t exclude Library  but Library          gitignore file Library       Library Application Support   Library Application Support Sublime Text 3   Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages   Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User   Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User  macro  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User  snippet  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User  settings  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User  keymap  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User  theme  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User      Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User     macro  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User     snippet  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User     settings  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User     keymap  Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User     theme    gt  git add Library   gt  git status  On branch master Your branch is up-to-date with  origin master   Changes to be committed     use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage       new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User Default  OSX  sublime-keymap     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User ElixirSublime sublime-settings     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User Package Control sublime-settings     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User Preferences sublime-settings     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User RESTer sublime-settings     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User SublimeLinter Monokai  SL  tmTheme     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User TextPastryHistory sublime-settings     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User ZenTabs sublime-settings     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User adrian-comment sublime-macro     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User json-pretty-generate sublime-snippet     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User raise-exception sublime-snippet     new file    Library Application Support Sublime Text 3 Packages User trailing spaces sublime-settings

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Especially for the older Git versions  most of the suggestions won t work that well  If that s the case  I d put a separate  gitignore in the directory where I want the content to be included regardless of other settings and allow there what is needed   For example    gitignore    ignore all  dll files   dll    dependency files  gitignore    include everything      So everything in  dependency files  even  dll files  are included just fine

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Commit 59856de from Karsten Blees  kblees  for Git 1 9 2 0  Q1 2014  clarifies that case   gitignore txt  clarify recursive nature of excluded directories     An optional prefix     which negates the pattern  any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again         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    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        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  --------------------------------------------------------------   In your case   application    application     application language    application language      application language gr      You must white-list folders first  before being able to white-list files within a given folder     Update Feb March 2016   Note that with git 2 9 x 2 10  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   Nguy n Th  i Ng c 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 with git 2 9   this could have actually worked  but was ultimately reverted   application   application language gr

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I have found a similar case here  where in laravel by default   gitignore ignores all using asterix  then overrides the public directory        public   gitignore   This is not sufficient if you run into the OP scenario   If you want to commit a specific subfolders of public  say for e g  in your public products directory you want to include files that are one subfolder deep e g  to include public products a b jpg they wont be detected correctly  even if you add them specifically like this   public products   public products    etc     The solution is to make sure you add an entry for every path level like this to override them all        gitignore  public   public     public products   public products    public products     public products     public products

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This worked for me      idea         idea copyright    idea copyright profiles settings xml   idea copyright Copyright xml

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Add an additional answer      vs                lt    include this folder to source control  folder only  nothing else   vs                 lt    but ignore all files and sub-folder inside this folder    vs ProjectSettings json  lt    but include this file to source control    vs config         lt    then include this folder to source control  folder only  nothing else    vs config         lt    then include all files inside the folder   here is result

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There are a bunch of similar questions about this  so I ll post what I wrote before   The only way I got this to work on my machine was to do it this way     Ignore all directories  and all sub-directories  and it s contents        Now ignore all files in the current directory    This fails to ignore files without a      for example    file txt  works  but    file  doesn t         Only Include these specific directories and subdirectories   wordpress   wordpress     wordpress   wp-content   wordpress   wp-content themes   wordpress   wp-content themes    wordpress   wp-content themes      wordpress   wp-content themes        wordpress   wp-content themes          wordpress   wp-content themes             Notice how you have to explicitly allow content for each level you want to include  So if I have subdirectories 5 deep under themes  I still need to spell that out   This is from  Yarin s comment here  https   stackoverflow com a 5250314 1696153  These were useful topics    How do negated patterns work in  gitignore  How do gitignore exclusion rules actually work    I also tried                 and    wp-content themes     or  wp-content themes       None of that worked for me  either  Lots of trial and error

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my JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA  gitignore configuration  where I need exclude wholde  idea folder except  idea runConfigurations    idea   idea   idea     idea runConfigurations    see  https   github com daggerok gitignore-idea-runConfigurations

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Chris Johnsen s answer is great  but with a newer versions of Git  1 8 2 or later   there is a double asterisk pattern you can leverage for a bit more shorthand solution     assuming the root folder you want to ignore is  application  application         the subfolder s  you want to track   application language gr    This way you don t have to  unignore  parent directory of the subfolder you want to track     With Git 2 17 0  Not sure how early before this version  Possibly back to 1 8 2   using the    pattern combined with excludes for each subdirectory leading up to your file s  works  For example     assuming the root folder you want to ignore is  application  application       Explicitly track certain content nested in the  application  folder   application language   application language gr   application language gr      Example adding all files  amp  folder in the  gr  folder  application language gr SomeFile txt   Example adding specific file in the  gr  folder

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If you exclude application   then everything under it will always be excluded  even if some later negative exclusion pattern     unignore     might match something under application     To do what you want  you have to    unignore    every parent directory of anything that you want to    unignore     Usually you end up writing rules for this situation in pairs  ignore everything in a directory  but not some certain subdirectory     you can skip this first one if it is not already excluded by prior patterns  application   application    application language   application language    application language gr    Note The trailing    is significant      The pattern dir  excludes a directory named dir and  implicitly  everything under it  With dir   Git will never look at anything under dir  and thus will never apply any of the    un-exclude    patterns to anything under dir  The pattern dir   says nothing about dir itself  it just excludes everything under dir  With dir    Git will process the direct contents of dir  giving other patterns a chance to    un-exclude    some bit of the content   dir sub

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gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore   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   Another example for WordPress     wp-content wp-content     wp-content plugins wp-content plugins    wp-content plugins my-awesome-plugin   More informations in here  https   git-scm com docs gitignore

[git] .gitignore exclude folder but include specific subfolder

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