As A Dev, Do You Use .gitignore To Ignore Everything And Purposefully Include? Or Do You Just Exclude With It?
Answer : The second method is the best practice, when it comes to exlude some folder contents of gitignore rules. It better reflect the following rule: It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded. To exclude files (or all files) from a subfolder of an ignored folder f , you would do: f/** !f/**/ !f/a/sub/folder/someFile.txt Meaning: you need to whitelist folders first, before being able to exclude from gitignore files. It is clearer, shorter (unless you have a large number of folder to whitelist) What if it is a Joomla install with a large amount of directories and files? Or what if a core upgrade adds new files or folders Don't forget you can have multiple gitignore files, one per folder. That means you can mix and match both approaches. And you have: http://gitignore.io/ (which does blacklist when it comes to Joomla application) github/gitignore (same approach for Joomla)