How do I tell Git to ignore everything except a subdirectory?

I want to ignore all files in my repository except those that occur in the bin subdirectory. I tried adding the following to my .gitignore:

*
!bin/*

This does not have the desired effect, however: I created a new file inside of bin/, but doing git status still shows nothing to commit (working directory clean).

Any suggestions?

Solution 1:

This ignores root files & root directories, then un-ignores the root bin directory:

/*
/*/
!/bin/

This way you get all of the bin directory, including subdirectories and their files.

Solution 2:

Here how to ignore everything exept one directory "MY_SUPER_DUPER_TEMPLATE_directory" in some directory

Structure: /bitrix/templates/MY_SUPER_DUPER_TEMPLATE_directory

/*
!/bitrix
/bitrix/*
!/bitrix/templates
/bitrix/templates/*
!/bitrix/templates/MY_SUPER_DUPER_TEMPLATE_directory
*.DS_Store
*.gitignore

Solution 3:

You must exclude everything on the way to the destinations, but you must include the destinations:

Note: This is an exclusion file (i.e. .gitignore) so the logic is inverted. Ignore all, except the tsp directory, ignore all in tsp directory, except the src directory...

/*
!/tsp
/tsp/*
!/tsp/src
/tsp/src/*
!/tsp/src/*.h
!/tsp/src/*.cpp
!/tsp/src/data.txt
!/.gitignore