How to override a rule set in .gitignore

Question

In .gitignore I have a rule that excludes a path settings.php

However, that rule has to be disregarded (the file has to be included in git), but for special reasons (the .gitignore file gets frequently reset to default from outside) I prefer not to change the .gitignore itself, but rather to override it by setting a counter-rule in the core.excludesfile file.

So in the relevant core.excludesfile file I put: !settings.php to override the above rule. But it does NOT work. I suspect that rules in .gitignore have priority over the ones in the global file with exclusions (this is how I understand https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitignore.html).

Is there any way to override a rule set in .gitignore by a rule in core.excludesfile or elsewhere?

Answer 1

Yes! It turns out that when adding a file to a repository you can force it to override .gitignore:

git add -f <filename>  or  git add --force <filename> 

Source: https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-add.html

Answer 2

There is an easy way how to override rules in a .gitignore file -- simply make a new .gitignore file on a deeper level. E.g. in my case I was able to make git ignore my settings.php file by adding "!settings.php" into a new .gitignore file in the same folder where settings.php lives.

Reference: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore

An optional prefix "!" which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded. Git doesn’t list excluded directories for performance reasons, so any patterns on contained files have no effect, no matter where they are defined. Put a backslash ("\") in front of the first "!" for patterns that begin with a literal "!", for example, "!important!.txt".