git - .gitignore whitelist on directory and its contents

Question

I'm trying to whitelist the directory (and its contents) SupplierName in my Zend Framework 2 vendor directory.

The original .gitignore file in /vendor looks like this:

# Add here the vendor path to be whitelisted
# Ex: for composer directory write here "!composer" (without quotes)
!.gitignore
*

Now I'd like to whitelist the directory SupplierName which shouldn't be too hard I thought. I have read the docs on gitignore and tried the following configurations:

First try, add !SupplierName right after the comment which says that I have to add the whitelisted path here.

# Add here the vendor path to be whitelisted
!SupplierName
# Ex: for composer directory write here "!composer" (without quotes)
!.gitignore
*

Right after that I executed git status which didn't show the vendor/SupplierName directory. git add vendor/SupplierName showed the following message:

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files: vendor/SupplierName

Second try

# Add here the vendor path to be whitelisted
# Ex: for composer directory write here "!composer" (without quotes)
!SupplierName
!.gitignore
*

Right after that I executed git status which didn't show the vendor/SupplierName directory. git add vendor/SupplierName showed the following message:

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files: vendor/SupplierName

Third try

# Add here the vendor path to be whitelisted
# Ex: for composer directory write here "!composer" (without quotes)
!.gitignore
*
!SupplierName

Right after that I executed git status which didn't show the vendor/SupplierName directory. git add vendor/SupplierName seems to work. But now, when I want to add the Module.php file (and some other files, subdirectories, etc) the following happens. git add vendor/SupplierName/Module.php -->

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files: vendor/SupplierName/Module.php

# Add here the vendor path to be whitelisted
# Ex: for composer directory write here "!composer" (without quotes)
*
!.gitignore
!SupplierName
!SupplierName/
!SupplierName/*

Allows me to add files directly in vendor/SupplierName, but git add vendor/SupplierName/config/module.config.php still results in

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files: vendor/SupplierName/config/module.config.php

I've been searching for problems regarding recursive whitelisting, because that seems to be the problem, but nothing came up.

Answer 1

You can use 2 .gitignore files to achieve the desired result:

# vendor/.gitignore
*
!.gitignore
!SupplierName/
!SupplierName/*

# vendor/SupplierName/.gitignore
!*

I tested this with a test repo and seems to work for me in adding files as many levels deep underneath the vendor/SupplierName directory.

$ git add .

$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   modified:   vendor/.gitignore
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/.gitignore
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/a
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/b
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/c
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/d
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/d
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/dir4/dir5/dir6/dir7/dir8/dir9/dir10/somefile
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/dir4/f1
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/dir4/f2
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/dir4/f3
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/dir4/f4
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/e
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir1/f
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir3/dir6/f5
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir3/dir6/f6
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir3/dir6/f7
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/dir3/dir7/f8
#   new file:   vendor/SupplierName/e
#