.gitignore syntax issue

Question

I have a given extension directory containing plenty of other directories. Among those plenty, one particular named important that I want to be staged by git. The others I don't. So I created a .gitignore file within my extension directory with the following content:

*
!README
!.gitignore
!important/**

My goal was saying to Git:

• ignore everything in this directory
• but keep the README file
• and also keep the .gitignore file
• and please, do keep also the important directory

But this is not working, only README and .gitignore are kept. The syntax seems the right one to me so... I do not know where I am wrong.

Any suggestion is most welcomed.

Answer 1

You don't need the ** to recursively got through a directory.

*
!README
!.gitignore
!important/

Take a look at this answer Make .gitignore ignore everything except a few files