How to write .gitignore, so that a directory is put in git, but not its contents

Question

Say I have a directory .../parent, containing various files and subdirectories. One of this subdirectories is /parent/slave

I would like to have all the files in .../parent/slave git-ignored, but not the directory slave itself - i.e., someone cloning the git repository, would always find an empty slave directory.

What do I have to put into .gitignore to achieve this?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4250063/how-to-gitignore-all-files-folder-in-a-folder-but-not-the-folder-itself — ComputerFellow, Sep 07 '14 at 09:43
possible duplicate of [How do I add an empty directory to a Git repository?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/115983/how-do-i-add-an-empty-directory-to-a-git-repository) — Simon Groenewolt, Sep 07 '14 at 09:45

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 07 '14 at 09:47

I think you can just about what you want by adding a .gitignore to the ../parent/slave directory with contents such as:

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

If that doesn't do what you're after, the other answers here may be helpful:

How do I add an empty directory to a Git repository?

How to write .gitignore, so that a directory is put in git, but not its contents

1 Answers1