Git: How to ignore/specify files for *checkout*

Question

If I don\'t want .html files tracked I can add the pattern to .gitignore and they\'ll be ignored. I\'d like to know how I can do the converse - at checkout, how could I ask git

Answer 1

So I wanted to ship my code without the test files to the production server.

Easiest way for me was just to remove all the test files with: rsync --exclude 'tests' after unpacking the archive.