How do you get git to ignore all contents of a directory?
GitGit Problem Overview
I have a git directory which contains the a whole bunch of files and then has a directory called 'sessions'. 'sessions' contains cookie information for my web.py program.
I need the folder 'sessions' to remain in the git repository because without the folder the program does not function correctly. I don't need the actual contents of folder being stored in the git directory.
So the question is:
How can I get git to ignore the contents of a folder but not the folder itself?
Git Solutions
Solution 1 - Git
Add a sessions/.gitignore file with
*
!.gitignore
The second line tells git not to ignore the .gitignore file, so the folder is not empty but everything else is ignored.
Solution 2 - Git
If I'm remembering correctly, you can do this by creating a .gitignore file in the sessions folder with [^.]* as its contents.
Solution 3 - Git
Since July 2007, gitignore does describe the exclusion patterns.
> If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the purpose of the following description, but it would only find a match with a directory. > > In other words, foo/ will match a directory foo and paths underneath it, but will not match a regular file or a symbolic link foo (this is consistent with the way how pathspec works in general in git).
As illustrated by this thread, that pattern was not always expressed with a '/' for matching directory.