How can I add an exception to .gitignore, like "ignore all the .dll files BUT myfile.dll"?

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5 Answers

Use ! to negate the pattern:

*.dll !myfile.dll
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If you want to ignore whole folder, except some specific files, then write:

MyFolder/* !MyFolder/CoolFile.txt

This won't work:

MyFolder/ !MyFolder/CoolFile.txt
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You can also ignore folders like 

!src/main/resources/archetype-resources/**/*

you can also ignore nested folder with patterns like

!**/src/test/resources/**/*

For quick creation of .gitignore file try gitignore.io

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You can have several .gitignore files working together in a hierarchical manner to achieve your goal. At the root level you may have:

root

*.dll

inside the folder having the myfile.dll you can add another .gitignore file like so:

root/lib/folderwithMyFiledll

!myfile.dll

more info here

An optional prefix "!" which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. Put a backslash ("\") in front of the first "!" for patterns that begin with a literal "!", for example, "!important!.txt". It is possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded if certain conditions are met. See section NOTES for detail.

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I did this because I have a folder called /modules that I want to ignore, except everything in the /modules/custom folder. This worked for me. Now my custom modules will get synced to GitHub.

/modules/* !/modules/custom/
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