From 59856de171397c355923ee6cd6debae89385c824 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Karsten Blees Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 22:36:29 +0100 Subject: gitignore.txt: clarify recursive nature of excluded directories 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 Reviewed-by: Jeff King Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/gitignore.txt | 19 +++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt index f971960512..205e80ef88 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], -- cgit v1.2.1