.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?

Answer 1

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'