Undo .gitignore changes

Question

I previously ignored a folder, but now I would like to ignore its content only: How do I remove/modify some entries from my.gitignore file so that git will track them again? I tried updating the gitignore file and adding the folder with git add -f <folder-name> , but it didn't work.

Thank you for your help

Answer 1

What do you mean by ignoring its content only, If you want to track an empty directory?

there is way to make a directory stay (almost) empty (in the repository) is to create a.gitignore file inside that directory that contains these four lines:

# Ignore everything in this directory
*
# Except this file
!.gitignore

Answer 2

Let us say you have one folder named target under the root folder that you added into your.gitignore file. The folder structure is similar to the one below:

-project root
  |- src
       |-- your src files here
  |- target
       |- file1
       |- file2
  |-.gitignore

I assume you want to undo git ignore and selectively ignore file inside the directory that you added to ignore list earlier. Let's suppose you want to add file 1 only from the directory structure above onto git ignore. In this case, edit the.gitignore file to remove the /target/ folder pattern and add a new. gitignore inside the target folder with file1 as content. It should automatically pick up only file2 for tracking.

-project root
  |- src
       |-- your src files here
  |- target
       |- file1
       |- file2
       |- .gitignore - add file1 here
  |-.gitignore - remove /target/ from here

Answer 3

git doesn't track folders, ignoring a folder or ignoring its contents is the same thing when it comes to git.

That said, it should be sufficient to remove the folder-entry from.gitignore to start track things in that folder.