How can I gitignore files in a directory structure but maintain the directory structure?

Question

Let's assume I have a dir structure like so:

app/
  uploads/
    .gitkeep
    images/
      .gitkeep
    videos/
      .gitkeep
    docs/
      .gitkeep

I want to keep the dir structure but not include the files within (except .gitkeep obviously). The docs say:

A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash matches zero or more directories. For example, "a/**/b" matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on.

So, I would expect this to do the trick:

/app/uploads/**
!/app/uploads/**/.gitkeep

This isn't working however. None of the subdirectories are being added.

Answer 1

The structure that I'm used, looks like this:

app/
  .gitignore
  uploads/
    images/
      .gitkeep
    videos/
      .gitkeep
    docs/
      .gitkeep

Content of my app/.gitignore file:

uploads/**    # Ignore everything in 'uploads' folder
!uploads/**/  # exclude subdirectories
!.gitkeep     # and .gitkeep files.