Git, ignore folder except for some files with certain extension

Question

I have a folder named packages in my git repo, I want to ignore everything inside that folder except for files with targets extension. I've tried this in my gitignore:

packages/
!packages/**/*.targets

but it doesn't work.

How do I ignore that folder but not the targets files?

Answer 1

This seems to work for me (Git 1.8.2.1):

packages/**/*.*
!packages/**/*.targets

I needed the *.* part, otherwise ** matches 0 directories, and a lone * at the end will match any directory inside packages, practically ignoring every directory, and any file inside.

I hope the *.* is not too bad for you, but having files without extension is pretty uncommon.