Init

Create a .gitignore file in current directory.

• Should place this file in the top level of the project

touch .gitignore
open .gitignore

Exclude file or directories

Ignore all files under dirname/ except dirname/filename.txt

dirname/*
!dirname/filename.txt
dirname/*/bin/config

You have to list the directory you want to exclude as <dirname>/* and not <dirname>/ because the latter will reference the directory as a whole, not it's contents so the ! inclusion won't work

# ignore all . files and . folders
.*

# ignore all . folders but include .files
.*/ # trailing / means directory

# ignore all . files but include . folders
.*
!.*/

Double Asterisk vs Single Asterisk

Single asterisk path applies rule only to current directory (where the .gitignore file is located)

.ext # excludes files named .ext in current dir
*.ext # excludes files with .ext extension in current dir

Double asterisk path recursively applies rule to all subdirectories

# ignore files with .ext suffix in any directory depth
**/.ext