Track Empty Directories with git

By  on  

There are times when you'd like to track an empty directory within git but there's a problem: git wont allow you to add a directory that doesn't have a file in it.  The easy solution is putting an empty stub file within the directory, and the industry standard for that stub file name is .gitkeep.

You can quickly create the file and commit the "empty" directory from command line:

touch my-empty-dir/.gitkeep
git add my-empty-dir/.gitkeep
git commit -m "Adding my empty directory"

The problem is simple, the solution is easy, but I wanted to highlight that .gitkeep is the industry standard.

Recent Features

  • By
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

  • By
    5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  Can you blame us though?  We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools ScrollSidebar

    How many times are you putting together a HTML navigation block or utility block of elements that you wish could be seen everywhere on a page? I've created a solution that will seamlessly allow you to do so: ScrollSidebar. ScrollSidebar allows you...

  • By
    Do / Undo Functionality with MooTools

    We all know that do/undo functionality is a God send for word processing apps. I've used those terms so often that I think of JavaScript actions in terms of "do" an "undo." I've put together a proof of concept Do/Undo class with MooTools. The MooTools...

Discussion

  1. Mathew

    If you want to keep empty directory in git and be sure that its eventually content won’t be pushed, you have to add line in .gitignore. Going to the point, .gitkeep is one of the methods and the more common (from my experience) is to create .gitignore with

    *
    !.gitignore
    
  2. Michal

    I’d be interested where the “.gitkeep is the industry standard” came from. Last time I was looking at a couple of repositories, the preference was an empty .gitignore file.

  3. Good tips, Mathew and David!

    @Mathew: When I use this tip, I usually include */ as well to exclude subfolders. This can be pretty handy for those log/, cache, and sessions types of directories.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!