Using .gitignore to ignore everything but specific directories

Question

My issue is that I have a bunch of WordPress websites in my git repo, of which I want to selectively commit only the content of my themes folders, while ignoring the rest of the redundant files found in WordPress.

I've used .gitignore files to ignore file types before, but can it be used the other way around- that is to ignore everything BUT a certain folder path?

root (git repo)
- / wordpress
- - / (WordPress Site 1)/wp-content/themes
- - / (WordPress Site 2)/wp-content/themes
- - / (WordPress Site 3)/wp-content/themes

Thanks-

UPDATE:

Based on the answers I did the following, but it's not working. Any ideas?

# Ignore everything:
*
# Except for wordpress themes:
!*/wp-content/themes/*

I've also tried the following variations:

!*/wp-content/themes*
!*wp-content/themes/*
!wp-content/themes/*
!/wordpress/*/wp-content/themes*
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes*

None of these read my themes folders.

Overanxious

Answer 1

Here's how I did it - you essentially have to walk up the paths, you can't wildcard more than one level in any direction:

# Ignore everything:
*

# Except for the themes directories:

!wordpress/
!wordpress/*/
!wordpress/*/wp-content/
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/*
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/*/*
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/*/*/*
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/*/*/*/*
!wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/*/*/*/*/*

Notice how you have to explicitly allow content for each level you want to include. So if I have subdirectories 5 deep under themes, I still need to spell that out.

This is only how it worked for me. If someone cares to offer a more informed explanation by all means.

Also, these answers helpful:
how-do-negated-patterns-work-in-gitignore
how-do-gitignore-exclusion-rules-actually-work

---

NOTE: I tried using double-wildcard 'globs' but according to this that functionality is system dependent and it didn't work on my mac:

Did NOT work:

!**/wp-content/themes/
!**/wp-content/themes/**

Overanxious

before git 1.8.4 the ** wildcard only workds if you have no slashes in your pattern, see sparethought.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/… – Rivarivage

This should work: !/wordpress/*/wp-content/themes/**/* – Ferneferneau

Does this syntax work on windows? It does not seem to be working for me... – Bibliomania

It works wonders on Windows 10. Using it for all kinds of custom projects from Visual Studio Code. – Mitzi

I used a combination of this answer and the one provided by @吴毅凡 , which worked for me. – Beirut

It's important to have a look at @吴毅凡 answere. The first line need to be changed. – Butcherbird

I work on windows, the first line works, everything is ignored. But I cannot unignore with !, all remains ignored. – Inquisitionist

Answer 2

I tried the above and they didn't work so well. A better approach is as follows from here: https://gist.github.com/444295

# This is a template .gitignore file for git-managed WordPress projects.
#
# Fact: you don't want WordPress core files, or your server-specific
# configuration files etc., in your project's repository. You just don't.
#
# Solution: stick this file up your repository root (which it assumes is
# also the WordPress root directory) and add exceptions for any plugins,
# themes, and other directories that should be under version control.
#
# See the comments below for more info on how to add exceptions for your
# content. Or see git's documentation for more info on .gitignore files:
# http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitignore.html

# Ignore everything in the root except the "wp-content" directory.
/*
!.gitignore
!wp-content/

# Ignore everything in the "wp-content" directory, except the "plugins"
# and "themes" directories.
wp-content/*
!wp-content/plugins/
!wp-content/themes/

# Ignore everything in the "plugins" directory, except the plugins you
# specify (see the commented-out examples for hints on how to do this.)
wp-content/plugins/*
# !wp-content/plugins/my-single-file-plugin.php
# !wp-content/plugins/my-directory-plugin/

# Ignore everything in the "themes" directory, except the themes you
# specify (see the commented-out example for a hint on how to do this.)
wp-content/themes/*
# !wp-content/themes/my-theme/

Mo

@dwenaus- thanks for sharing this- looks useful for repos rooted in a specific wordpress dir, but won't work on repo w multiple wordpress sites underneath it, which is what I was going for.. – Overanxious

This structure / model is super helpful. I wanted a single repo for a combined Magento / WP install, and with fewer than 30 lines of .gitignore using this technique, I was able to get it narrowed down to just the Magento theme / skin files and the WP theme files. Thanks! – Trepidation

just don't use this setup with auto-deploy because a novice git user could mess up files outside of the indented areas (ie. if they delete all files in the repo by accident and that is auto deployed it'll be messy). Other than that it works well. – Mo

You are the man dude! Especially if your version is >=2.1.4. Ref: git-scm.com/docs/gitignore/2.1.4 – Bryan

Answer 3

modify the first line

*

change it to

/*

Zoophobia

This work for me. My .gitignore file is like this /* !.gitignore !/vendors – Clicker

Your answer was the only that worked for me. – Bawdy

This works. Best and simple answer. – Euboea

Answer 4

Try these answers:

Make .gitignore ignore everything except a few files

# Ignore everything
*

# But not these files...
!.gitignore
!script.pl
!template.latex
# etc...

# ...even if they are in subdirectories
!*/

---

How do I tell Git to ignore everything except a subdirectory?

This ignores root files & root directories, then un-ignores the root bin directory:

/*
/*/
!/bin/

This way you get all of the bin directory, including subdirectories and their files.

Confluent

@irritate- Thanks, did not see these- however, I'm having trouble applying them to my situation. See my edits above... – Overanxious

The second link I posted says that you would need both !*/wp-content/themes/ and !*/wp-content/themes/*. Have you tried that variation? Also, as an alternative, you could just use !*/wp-content/themes/ and in each themes directory have its own .gitignore file with !* – Confluent

@irritate- no that variation doesn't work either, and anyway I don't see how that would be any different from !*/wp-content/themes* – Overanxious

Answer 5

If you prefix a pattern with an exclamation point (!) it negates any previous pattern which excluded it. So, presumably, you could ignore everything, then only allow what you want by using this pattern.

Autogenous

@dappawit- Thanks- concept makes sense, and I got it working for files, but not for my themes folders- see my edits above... – Overanxious

I am not an expert on glob patterns, but reading the .gitignore man page, I believe this may work: !wordpress/[write out directories]/wp-content/themes/. Notice the closing slash and no closing asterisk. Also note that * will only match one level, not multiple directories. Here is the man page: kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitignore.html – Autogenous

Helped me realise I had to put the negation after the other rules thanks – Bowhead

Answer 6

Say you have a directory structure like this:

– sites
– -all
– – – -files
– – – – – -private
– – – – – – – -newspilot
– -default
– – – -files
– – – – – -private
– – – – – – – -newspilot

When you want to only allow sites/all/files/private/newspilot and sites/default/files/private/newspilot, you might, at first, try this:

sites/*/files/*
!sites/*/files/private/newspilot

This is wrong! The tricky thing with gitignore is that you have to first allow the parent ("private") directory to be included, before you can allow its child directory ("newspilot") to be included in commits.

sites/*/files/*
!sites/*/files/private
sites/*/files/private/*
!sites/*/files/private/newspilot

http://www.christianengvall.se/gitignore-exclude-folder-but-include-a-subfolder/

Kraus

"you have to first allow the parent directory to be included, before you can allow its child directory" - Thank you for pointing this out! Was precisely my problem. – Translate

Answer 7

I needed to ignore everything but not one folder with subdirectories.

For me, this works

# Ignore everything
/*

# Not these directories
!folder/

# Not these files
!.gitignore
!.env
!file.txt

Streeto

Answer 8

Yarin's answer worked for me, here's my version (I don't need the /wordpress sub-directory):

*

!.gitignore
!/wp-content/
!/wp-content/themes/
!/wp-content/themes/*
!/wp-content/themes/*/*
!/wp-content/themes/*/*/*
!/wp-content/themes/*/*/*/*
!/wp-content/themes/*/*/*/*/*

# I don't want to track this one, so it's included here, after the negated patterns. 
wp-content/themes/index.php

Knowhow

Answer 9

I always get stuck somewhere on this even after coming back to this question numerous times. I've come up with a detailed process of doing it step by step:

First just use git add to add the actual content.

It'll show the relevant files added to the index while all others still untracked. This helps contructing .gitignore step by step.

$ git add wp-content/themes/my-theme/*
$ git status

    Changes to be committed:
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/index.php
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/style.css

    Untracked files:
        wp-admin/
        wp-content/plugins/
        wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/
        wp-content/themes/twentytwelve/
        ...
        wp-includes/
        ...

Add a temporary DUMMY.TXT file in your directory:

$ git status

    Changes to be committed:
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/index.php
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/style.css

    Untracked files:
        wp-admin/
        wp-content/plugins/
        wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/
        wp-content/themes/twentytwelve/
        ...
        wp-content/themes/my-theme/DUMMY.TXT  <<<
        ...
        wp-includes/
        ...

Our goal now is to construct the rules such that this DUMMY.TXT be the only one still showing up as Untracked when we're done.

Start adding the rules:

.gitignore

/*

First one is just to ignore everything. Untracked files should be all gone, only indexed files should be showing:

$ git status

    Changes to be committed:
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/index.php
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/style.css

Add the first dir in the path wp-content

/*
!/wp-content

Now the Untracked files will show up again, but only have wp-content's contents

$ git status

    Changes to be committed:
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/index.php
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/style.css

    Untracked files:
        wp-content/plugins/
        wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/
        wp-content/themes/twentytwelve/
        ..

Ignore everything in the first dir /wp-content/* and un-ignore !/wp-content/themes

/*
!/wp-content

/wp-content/*
!/wp-content/themes

Now the Untracked files will further narrow down to only wp-content/themes

$ git status

    Changes to be committed:
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/index.php
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/style.css

    Untracked files:
        wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/
        wp-content/themes/twentytwelve/
        ..

Repeat the process till that dummy file is the only one still showing as Untracked:

/*
!/wp-content

/wp-content/*
!/wp-content/themes

/wp-content/themes/*
!/wp-content/themes/my-theme

$ git status

    Changes to be committed:
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/index.php
        new file:   wp-content/themes/my-theme/style.css

    Untracked files:
        wp-content/themes/my-theme/DUMMY.TXT

Cigarette

Answer 10

After having a need for this multiple times I have finally found a solution [1]:

/*/
/*.*
!.git*
!/wordpress

Explanation line by line:

1. Ignore all directories at the root.
2. Ignore all files with extensions at the root.
3. Allow .gitignore itself (and potentially .gitattributes).
4. Allow the desired directory with all subdirectories

[1] Limitations (that I'm aware of):

1. It does not ignore files without an extension at the root (and adding /* would break the entire scheme).
2. The directory that you want to include in line 4 (wordpress in this case) cannot have . in the name (e.g. wordpress.1 would not work). If it does have a ., then remove line 2 and find another way to exclude all files at the root.
3. Tested only on Windows with git version 2.17.1.windows.2

Southey

Answer 11

Another easy solution :

You want to ignore all Wordpress files, but not your theme (for example).

.gitignore, content is :

# All wordpress + content of revert ignored directories
wordpress/*
wordpress/wp-content/*
wordpress/wp-content/themes/*

# Revert ignoring directories
!wordpress/
!wordpress/wp-content/
!wordpress/wp-content/themes/
!wordpress/wp-content/themes/my_theme

In this example, you can remove wordpress if .gitignore is in root wordpress directory

You can do exactly the same with every folders and content you want to "exceptionally" keep out of gitignored folders/files

Conclusion :

Be sure to unignore all directories of a path that you want to unignore

BUT

Be sure to ignore all content of unignored directories that you want to ignore

Cabob

Answer 12

For those looking for a cleaner solution, please try the following.

As mentioned in the comments of this answer, you have to use this method recursively.

In this example, you have a website setup at ./ where your .git folder and .gitignore file is located and a WordPress installation setup in ./wordpress. To correctly ignore the everything under the ./wordpress directory apart from the theme directory itself (wordpress/wp-content/themes/my-theme), you will have to recursively ignore and allow each directory up until the directory you wish to allow:

wordpress/*
wordpress/wp-content/*
wordpress/wp-content/themes/*
!wordpress/wp-content
!wordpress/wp-content/themes
!wordpress/wp-content/themes/my-theme

The reason for ignoring with a wildcard and allowing (or, ignoring 'apart from') the directory itself enables Git to look inside the directory first before ignoring everything inside. We then tell Git to ignore everything 'apart from' the directory we have specified. Here's the same syntax but in order of how Git is looking at it:

wordpress/*                            # Ignore everything inside here
!wordpress/wp-content                  # Apart from this directory

wordpress/wp-content/*                 # Ignore everything inside here
!wordpress/wp-content/themes           # Apart from this directory

wordpress/wp-content/themes/*          # Ignore everything inside here
!wordpress/wp-content/themes/my-theme  # Apart from this directory

Hopefully this helps someone better understand the need for the recursive method.

Hauger

Answer 13

late to the party but here's what I use for unknown depth (the accepted solution requires known depth)

/*
!.gitignore
!wp-content/
!*/

this way everything under wp-content is not ignored.

Cubical

Answer 14

Here's my solution, which assumes a checkout into wp-content

# Ignore everything except directories
*
!*/

# except everything in the child theme and its required plugin
!/themes/mytheme-child/**
!/plugins/my-plugin/**

# and this file
!.gitignore

and testing:

git version 2.20.1 (Apple Git-117)
$ git check-ignore -v .foo foo foo/ themes/foo themes/foo/bar themes/mytheme-child \
themes/mytheme-child/foo plugins/foo plugins/my-plugin plugins/my-plugin/foo .gitignore
.gitignore:2:*  .foo
.gitignore:2:*  foo
.gitignore:2:*  foo/
.gitignore:2:*  themes/foo
.gitignore:2:*  themes/foo/bar
.gitignore:2:*  themes/mytheme-child
.gitignore:6:!/themes/mytheme-child/**  themes/mytheme-child/foo
.gitignore:2:*  plugins/foo
.gitignore:2:*  plugins/my-plugin
.gitignore:7:!/plugins/my-plugin/** plugins/my-plugin/foo
.gitignore:10:!.gitignore   .gitignore

so it correctly ignores everything I don't want and nothing I want to keep.

Releasing Code

Gitlab is configured with repository mirrors for protected branches, according to https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/repository_mirroring.html

When code is pushed to a protected branch, it will be mirrored to the staging and production servers in the /opt/checkout/repo.git/ bare repo. The following post-receive hook (in /opt/checkout/repo.git/hooks/post-receive) will then checkout the code into the working directory.

#!/bin/bash

BRANCH=staging
GIT_DIR=/opt/checkout/repo.git
GIT_WORK_TREE=/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-content

# on push, checkout the code to the working tree
git checkout -f "${BRANCH}"

# ensure permissions are correct
sudo chown -R bitnami:daemon "${GIT_WORK_TREE}"
sudo chmod -R go-w "${GIT_WORK_TREE}"

For more information, see https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-automatic-deployment-with-git-with-a-vps

Fluoroscopy

Answer 15

You can try this:

!**/themes/*

Where:

• !: negate ignore (include)
• **: any directory tree (recursion) so you don't have to specify you folder path
• themes: your folder to include (can be anything)
• *: any file in that folder, you can include all subfolders as well with ** and instead of including any file (*) you can be specific *.css, *.xy

Inadmissible

Answer 16

Here's how I did it:

# Ignore everything at root:
/*

# Except for directories:
!wordpress/(WordPress Site 1)/wp-content/themes/
!wordpress/(WordPress Site 1)/wp-content/themes/
!wordpress/(WordPress Site 1)/wp-content/themes/

# Except files:
!README

#Except files of type:
!*.txt

This is what worked for me. Allows you to ignore everything except specific files or folders

macOS sierra

Anxiety

Answer 17

I am in the same boat trying to manage a bunch of Wordpress sites under one repo. My directory structure looks like this:

root (git repo)
(WordPress Site 1)/app/public/wp-content/themes
(WordPress Site 2)/app/public/wp-content/themes
(WordPress Site 3)/app/public/wp-content/themes

I want to just track the items inside the app/public folder for each site. I tried the samples in this page as well as some of the suggestions here and ended up trying this:

/(WordPress Site 1)/*
!(WordPress Site 1)/app
(WordPress Site 1)/app/*
!(WordPress Site 1)/app/public

which worked but I would have to ignore the same path for each site which I was trying to avoid.

Then I just replaced the name of the site with * and that did the trick for me. So this is what I ended up using:

/*/*
!*/app
*/app/*
!*/app/public

This effectively ignored everything in the site's folder while capturing everything in the app/public folder for any site that I create in the root.

Note that it will not ignore files in the root, just directories :)

Hope this helps.

Measurable