gitignore directory pattern ignores folder with same suffix, but I want to include it

Question

I have the following directory structure:

src/
out/
cout/
...

and I want to ignore out/ but not cout/.

I've tried putting ^out/, but that doesn't seem to work. I've also tried out/ but that also ignores cout/.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Exclamation mark(!) should precede a match which should not be ignored.

The .gitignore file should look like:

out/
!cout/

Answer 2

Sorry guys, my mistake! The cout directory was empty and, therefore, not showing up under git status.

Just adding out/ works fine and doesn't ignore cout/.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 3

Which version of git are you using?

With msysgit 1.6.3-preview20090507-2, the simple

out/

works for me. cout/ is still added to the repository.