Can't understand how gitignore ignores the folders

Question

I want to create repository for my Magento project. There are lots of folders and files in root directory and I change time to time only one folder: app/code/local/

Answer 1

Try below to ignore like you need:

/*
!/app/
/app/*
!/app/code/
/app/code/*
!/app/code/local/

The following discussion was helpful: http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/negated-list-in-gitignore-no-fun-td1675067.html , especially the following from Linus:

That's by design. You've chosen to ignore those directories; they match "*" themselves. Thus, 'git add .' doesn't descend into them looking for files.

So basically, for each level you have to go in, unignore that folder, and ignore contents within that folder.