Newbie .gitignore problem

[Jonathan Gossage <jgossage@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am having a problem specifying .gitignore filters properly
I have a directory structure as follows:

ÂÂ Â Â Â Ârepo-root
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â |
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â -------------------------------------------------------------------
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â|
 Â Â Â Â Â |
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Âdir1 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â dir2 Â(symlink)
      Âdir3
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â|
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â---------------------------------------------------
ÂÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â |
    Âmany directories and files           dir4

My problem is that I want to exclude all files and sub-directories in dir2
except for dir4 from control by Git.
I tried a number of variations on the following .gitignore file in dir2 but
either everything was excluded or everything was included. I tested using
git add -uall -n

The final .gitignore file was
*
*/*
!dir4


How should I go about tackling this. The .gitignore man pages were
unclear to me.

Jonathan Gossage
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