Can't understand how gitignore ignores the folders

Question

I want to create repository for my Magento project. There are lots of folders and files in root directory and I change time to time only one folder: app/code/local/

Answer 1

Try below to ignore like you need:

/*
!/app/
/app/*
!/app/code/
/app/code/*
!/app/code/local/

The following discussion was helpful: http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/negated-list-in-gitignore-no-fun-td1675067.html , especially the following from Linus:

That's by design. You've chosen to ignore those directories; they match "*" themselves. Thus, 'git add .' doesn't descend into them looking for files.

So basically, for each level you have to go in, unignore that folder, and ignore contents within that folder.

Answer 2

According to the documentation:

"It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded."

For example, if you had already been working with the repository and told Git to ignore the parent directory, made some commits, and then went back and tried to allow some sub-directory of the excluded directory, it will not include that sub directory even if your .gitignore file is correct. To get around this, you need to force add it (with the -f flag):

git add -f {file}

Once this has been done, subsequent changes will be tracked.

Answer 3

Is this .gitignore in the root of the repo?

Try this:

/*
!/app/code/local