How do I ignore a certain file type in a certain directory and its sub-directory in Git?

Question

How can I ignore a certain filetype only in one directory and its sub-directory?

To explain what I mean imaging the following setup

• anotherdir/
  • seeme1.iml
• foldertoignore/
  • ignoreme1.iml
  • seeme3.txt
  • anotherignorefolder/
    • ignoreme2.iml
    • seeme4.txt
• seeme5.iml

I want to be able to do is tell git (using .gitignore file) to ignore *.iml but only under the directory foldtertoignore .

I was thinking this would work

foldertoignore/*.iml

But that only found ignoreme1.iml not ignoreme2.iml

I know how to tell it to ignore *.iml except for a specific directory. This is the reverse of that. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

.gitignore rules are applied recursively from the containing directory. Simply create the file foldertoignore/.gitignore with *.iml as contents.

>>foldertoignore/.gitignore echo '*.iml'
git add foldertoignore/.gitignore
git commit -m 'Ignore .iml files in foldertoignore and its subfolders'

Answer 2

You can try this:

/foldertoignore/**/*.iml

It may or may not work depending on fnmatch implementation in your OS I suppose. Alternative is:

*.iml
!/anotherdir/*.iml
!/*.iml