gitignore directory exception not working

Question

I have the following folder structure:

public
    media
        catalog
            product
            category
        private
        tmp
        var
        test

I want to gitignore everything in the media directory except for catalog/category and private

My gitignore I am trying is:

public/media/*
!public/media/catalog/category/
!public/media/private

But it doesn't work. Any new files added to the category or private directories are not available to add.

I could just git add force but I would like this done through the gitignore if possible

Answer 1

It's usually simplest to put just a .gitignore at the level where it starts to matter. (This also helps if you ever split a repository or move directories around.) In this case you need to ignore everything except catalog and private in the public/media folder so in public/media/.gitignore put:

/*
!/catalog/
!/private/

and in public/media/catalog/.gitignore put:

/*
!/category/

It's important (and the reason that your rules are not working) not to ignore the public/media/catalog directory itself, as otherwise everything in it will be ignored, even if you didn't want to ignore a specific part of its contents.

Of course, you can combine this into a single ignore at the public/media level if you like:

/*
!/catalog/
!/private/
/catalog/*
!/catalog/category/

Answer 2

Solution with one .gitignore at root level

You tried to use one .gitignore file at the repository's root level. Like you, I usually also centralize all ignores like this to keep things tidy. In this case it is difficult though, because "It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded" [source].

My ugly solution for this restriction, which I also explore in my related answers here and here: re-include all parent directories along the path before re-including your desired file, while keeping other files in these parent directories out by re-excluding them.

With that, your .gitignore patterns would be:

public/media/**
!public/media/private
!public/media/catalog/

public/media/catalog/**
!public/media/catalog/category/