Firebase deploy, ignore all files but public folder

Use the glob ** to ignore any file or folder in an arbitrary sub-directory.

You can then un-ignore your dist folder with !dist

So your firebase.json file would look like:

{
    "database": {
        "rules": "database.rules.json"
        },
        "hosting": {
            "public": "dist",
            "ignore": [
                "**",
                "!dist/**"
            ],
            "rewrites": [{
                "source": "**",
                "destination": "/index.html"
            }
        ]
    }
}

For newer versions of Firebase:

It appears that new versions of firebase don't allow for the above mentioned method, so instead just define the folders which should be ignored:

{
    "database": {
        "rules": "database.rules.json"
        },
        "hosting": {
            "public": "dist",
            "ignore": [
                "**/node_modules/**",
                "**/src/**",
                "**/public/**"
            ],
            "rewrites": [{
                "source": "**",
                "destination": "/index.html"
            }
        ]
    }
}

You can use the Firebase console to check how many files have been deployed:

1. Open your Firebase project's Hosting page and take note of the number of files.
2. Run the command $ tree dist/ (since in this case dist/ is the folder we are serving on Firebase hosting) and take note of the number of files in the build folder.

These should roughly be the same number of files.