gitignore - ignoring any 'bin' directory on a git project

Question

I have a directory structure like this:

.git/
.gitignore
main/
  ...
tools/
  ...
...

Inside main and tools, and any other directory, at any level, there can be a 'bin' directory, which I want to ignore (and I want to ignore everything under it too). I've tried each of these patterns in .gitignore but none of them work:

/**/bin/**/*
/./**/bin/**/*
./**/bin/**/*
**/bin/**/*
*/bin/**/*
bin/**/*
/**/bin/* #and the others with just * at the end too

Can anyone help me out? The first pattern (the one I think should be working) works just fine if I do this:

/main/**/bin/**/*

But I don't want to have an entry for every top-level directory and I don't want to have to modify .gitignore every time I add a new one.

This is on Windows using the latest msysgit.

EDIT: one more thing, there are files and directories that have the substring 'bin' in their names, I don't want those to be ignored :)

Answer 1

Before version 1.8.2, ** didn't have any special meaning in the .gitignore. As of 1.8.2 git supports ** to mean zero or more sub-directories (see release notes).

The way to ignore all directories called bin anywhere below the current level in a directory tree is with a .gitignore file with the pattern:

bin/

In the man page, there an example of ignoring a directory called foo using an analogous pattern.

Edit: If you already have any bin folders in your git index which you no longer wish to track then you need to remove them explicitly. Git won't stop tracking paths that are already being tracked just because they now match a new .gitignore pattern. Execute a folder remove (rm) from index only (--cached) recursivelly (-r). Command line example for root bin folder:

git rm -r --cached bin