Additionally, precedence of negated patterns is exactly as outlined in
the DESCRIPTION section, we don't need to repeat this.
Signed-off-by: Karsten Blees <redacted>
---
Documentation/gitignore.txt | 18 ++++++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
index f971960..5ecc48e 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
@@ -79,8 +79,9 @@ PATTERN FORMAT
- An optional prefix "`!`" which negates the pattern; any
matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become
- included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will
- override lower precedence patterns sources.
+ included again. It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent
+ directory of that file is excluded (i.e. excluding a directory
+ will recursively and irrevocably exclude the entire content).
Put a backslash ("`\`") in front of the first "`!`" for patterns
that begin with a literal "`!`", for example, "`\!important!.txt`".
@@ -182,6 +183,19 @@ Another example:
The second .gitignore prevents Git from ignoring
`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`.
+Example to exclude everything except a specific directory `foo/bar`
+(note the `/*` - without the slash, the wildcard would also exclude
+everything within `foo/bar`):
+
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+ $ cat .gitignore
+ # exclude everything except directory foo/bar
+ /*
+ !/foo
+ /foo/*
+ !/foo/bar
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+
SEE ALSO
--------
linkgit:git-rm[1],
--
1.8.4.msysgit.0.12.g88f5ed0