If you exclude application/
, then everything under it will always be excluded (even if some later negative exclusion pattern (“unignore”) might match something under application/
).
To do what you want, you have to “unignore” every parent directory of anything that you want to “unignore”. Usually you end up writing rules for this situation in pairs: ignore everything in a directory, but not some certain subdirectory.
# you can skip this first one if it is not already excluded by prior patterns
!application/
application/*
!application/language/
application/language/*
!application/language/gr/
Note
The trailing /*
is significant:
- The pattern
dir/
excludes a directory nameddir
and (implicitly) everything under it.
Withdir/
, Git will never look at anything underdir
, and thus will never apply any of the “un-exclude” patterns to anything underdir
. - The pattern
dir/*
says nothing aboutdir
itself; it just excludes everything underdir
.
Withdir/*
, Git will process the direct contents ofdir
, giving other patterns a chance to “un-exclude” some bit of the content (!dir/sub/
).