Git: How to add files and subfolders in a gitignore'd folder

Question

Suppose I have a folder

application/uploads

EDIT

application/uploads/{a}/{b}/{c}/{d}/{e}/{f}/{g}/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

{a},{b},{c},{d},{e},{f},{g} - are hash keys, any alpha-numeric characters are possible

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz - is a hashed filename

I don't want git to track it neither on development machines nor on production server, so it is added to a .gitignore file.

Suppose now I've created a branch "Backups" on the production server where I want to store the state of the project at different moments of time.

To do that I need to 'add' and 'commit' all files of a project including those which are under .gitignore

Note: Changing .gitignore is a bad idea in general because

1. It might cause problems when pulling changes from develment branches

2. In a heavily loaded and recently changing project it will be a problem to checkout other branch because of new untracked files that are added each second right after you finished adding and commiting the previous ones

3. etc...

So the question: How do I force git to 'add' files that are under .gitignore ad then 'commit' them without actually changing .gitignore?

Answer 1

From the git-add manpage:

   -f, --force
       Allow adding otherwise ignored files.

Answer 2

.gitignore allows not only to ignore but also to re-add, it's the exclamation mark:

!add-this-dir/file/whatever

You will find this properly documented here, if you're in shell type git help gitignore.