git ignore exception

Question

I have a gitignore file that makes git ignore *.dll files, and that is actually the behavior I want. However, if I want an exception ( i.e. to be able to commit foo.dll), how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Just add ! before an exclusion rule.

According to the gitignore man page:

Patterns have the following format:

...

• An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence patterns sources.

Answer 2

Use:

*.dll    #Exclude all dlls
!foo.dll #Except for foo.dll

From gitignore:

An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence patterns sources.

Answer 3

You can simply git add -f path/to/foo.dll.

.gitignore ignores only files for usual tracking and stuff like git add .

Answer 4

!foo.dll in .gitignore, or (every time!) git add -f foo.dll