.gitignore exclude folder but include specific sub

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...

Answer 1

@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 & folder in the 'gr' folder
!application/language/gr/SomeFile.txt # Example adding specific file in the 'gr' folder

Answer 2

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.