Commit empty folder structure with git

Question

I have data directory in project s root  It has images directory and some files  Here is example   data  -- images       -- image1 jpg       -- image2 jpg       -- image3 jpg   -- results csv  -- r txt   What to write in gitignore  to ignore files from data  directory  that is results csv and r txt  and files from images  directory  image jpg  image2 jpg  image3 jpg    When I commit it  folder structure in repository should be   data   -- images    So  I just want empty folder structure to be commited

User · Accepted Answer

In Git  you cannot commit empty folders  because Git does not actually save folders  only files  You ll have to create some placeholder file inside those directories if you actually want them to be  empty   i e  you have no committable content

User · Answer

According to their FAQ  GIT doesn t track empty directories   Git FAQ  However  there are workarounds based on your needs and your project requirements   Basically if you want to track an empty directory you can place a  gitkeep file in there  The file can be blank and it will just work  This is Gits way of tracking an empty directory   Another option is to provide documentation for the directory  You can just add a readme file in it describing its expected usage  Git will track the folder because it has a file in it and you have now provided documentation to you and or whoever else might be using the source code   If you are building a web app you may find it useful to just add an index html file which may contain a permission denied message if the folder is only accessible through the app  Codeigniter does this with all their directories

User · Answer

Recursively create  gitkeep files  find   -type d -empty -not -path     git    -exec touch     gitkeep

User · Answer

Just add a file  gitkeep in every folder you want committed   On windows do so by right clicking when in the folder and select  Git bash from here  Then type  touch  gitkeep

User · Answer

Traditionally whenever I ve wanted to commit and empty directory structure  I create the structure and then in the leaf directories place an empty file called empty txt   Then when I put stuff in that s ready to commit  I can simply remove the empty txt file and commit the real files   i e    data   images   empty txt

User · Answer

You can make an empty commit with git commit --allow-empty  but that will not allow you to commit an empty folder structure as git does not know or care about folders as objects themselves -- just the files they contain

User · Answer

Simply add file named as  keep in images folder you can now stage and commit and also able to add folder to version control   Create a empty file in images folder   touch  keep    git status   On branch master Your branch is up-to-date with  origin master    Untracked files     use  git add      to include in what will be committed       images   nothing added to commit but untracked files present  use  git add  to track      git add      git commit -m  adding empty folder

User · Answer

This is easy   tell  gitignore to ignore everything except  gitignore and the folders you want to keep  Put  gitignore into folders that you want to keep in the repo   Contents of the top-most  gitignore     ignore everything except  gitignore and folders that I care about     images    gitignore   In the nested images folder this is your  gitignore     ignore everything except  gitignore     gitignore   Note  you must spell out in the  gitignore the names of the folders you don t want to be ignored in the folder where that  gitignore is located  Otherwise they are  obviously  ignored   Your folders in the repo will  obviously  NOT be empty  as each one will have  gitignore in it  but that part can be ignored  right

User · Answer

Consider also just doing mkdir -p data images in your Makefile  if the directory needs to be there during build   If that s not good enough  just create an empty file in data images and ignore data   touch data images  gitignore git add data images  gitignore git commit -m  Add empty  gitignore to keep data images around  echo data  gt  gt   gitignore git add  gitignore git commit -m  Add data to  gitignore

[git] Commit empty folder structure (with git)

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