.gitignore wildcard suffix exclusion with negation for subfolder

Question

I have a .gitignore which is like this:

*.png
*.jpg
*.gif
!0/*.png
!0/*.jpg
!0/*.gif

I want to ignore all image files (.png, .jpg, .gif) in all folders but not in the folder /0/. All image files in this folder should not be ignored.

I tried with the above .ignore file but it is not working as image files in /0/ are still ignored. How to write this correctly?

Do you mean `./0/` directory? I mean, not an absolute path as `/0/` — Gonzalo Matheu, Oct 19 '18 at 17:38
The subdirectory has the name of 0. All images within the folder zero should not be excluded. Maybe its just trivial but I did not figure out the correct way of writing it after several tries. — Blackbam, Oct 19 '18 at 17:39
Is .gitignore a "use first match" system? Try putting the negated lines first. — studog, Oct 19 '18 at 17:39
Tried but does not help. `!0/` would work by the way but thats not what I need here. — Blackbam, Oct 19 '18 at 17:40
Could you add your actual directory structure to the original question? (i.e: `tree` or `ls -al . 0` ) — Gonzalo Matheu, Oct 19 '18 at 17:48
Hmm there are many many nested subfolders in 0/ and there are also many many folders in the root directory. — Blackbam, Oct 19 '18 at 18:10

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 19 '18 at 18:55

The ignore pattern:

!0/*.png

means "don't ignore any *.png file that is directly inside a folder named 0". So this would include 0/abc.png, and it would include 1/0/def.png, but it would exclude 0/1/ghi.png.

If you want to include all *.png below the folder 0, there are two ways to do this.

You can use the following pattern:

*.png
!/0/**/*.png

The ** pattern matches any series of subdirectories, including the root. Starting the pattern with / means that the pattern must match starting with the current directory. So this will include 0/abc.png, 0/subdir/def.png, and 0/subdir/ghi/jkl.png. It will exclude abc.png and 1/abc.png.

Alternatively, you can create a file .gitignore with

*.png

And then you can create another file, 0/.gitignore, which contains:

!*.png

This is a little more obvious, and it has exactly the same effect.

Demo

Here is the base *.png rule, it ignores all *.png files:

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in .../.git/
$ mkdir -p 0/1
$ touch img.png 0/img.png 0/1/img.png
$ cat >.gitignore
*.png
$ git add -n .
add '.gitignore'

Here is the rule you have, which includes any *.png inside any directory named 0:

$ cat >.gitignore
*.png
!0/*.png
$ git add -n .
add '.gitignore'
add '0/img.png'

Here is the fixed pattern:

$ cat >.gitignore  
*.png
!/0/**/*.png
$ git add -n .
add '.gitignore'
add '0/1/img.png'
add '0/img.png'

Here is the alternative:

$ cat >.gitignore
*.png
$ cat >0/.gitignore
!*.png
$ git add -n .
add '.gitignore'
add '0/.gitignore'
add '0/1/img.png'
add '0/img.png'

.gitignore wildcard suffix exclusion with negation for subfolder

1 Answers1

Demo