Question

This .gitignore doesn’t ignore .emacs.d

.*
!.emacs.d

but the following does ignore it:

*  <- only change
.*
!.emacs.d

Why?

This is with git-1.7.10-x86_64

Answer 1

I suspect that * matches the current directory in which the file .emacs.d is.
And if a directory is ignored, git won’t look inside at all (including for negate rules exceptions).

See, for more on that behavior:

• “How do gitignore exclusion rules actually work?“
• “.gitignore exclude folder but include specific subfolder“

If you exclude aDirectory/, then everything under it will always be excluded (even if some later negative exclusion pattern (“unignore”) might match something under aDirectory/).

The OP user273158 asks:

How can I then exclude all files and directories (hidden or not hidden) in a given path (e.g. my home directory), except .emacs.d (and other exceptions)

I suppose this should work better:

./*
!/.emacs.d