How can I add a blank directory to a Git repository?
How can I add a blank directory (that contains no files) to a Git repository?
Create an empty file called .gitkeep
in the directory, and add that. You could always put a README file in the directory with an explanation of why you want this, otherwise empty, directory in the repository.
Why would we need empty versioned folders
First things first:
An empty directory cannot be part of a tree under the Git versioning system.
It simply won’t be tracked. But there are scenarios in which “versioning” empty directories can be meaningful, for example:
- scaffolding a predefined folder structure, making it available to every user/contributor of the repository; or, as a specialized case of the above, creating a folder for temporary files, such as a
cache/
orlogs/
directories, where we want to provide the folder but.gitignore
its contents - related to the above, some projects won’t work without some folders (which is often a hint of a poorly designed project, but it’s a frequent real-world scenario and maybe there could be, say, permission problems to be addressed).
Many users suggest:
- Placing a
README
file or another file with some content in order to make the directory non-empty, or - Creating a
.gitignore
file with a sort of “reverse logic” (i.e. to include all the files) which, at the end, serves the same purpose of approach #1.
While both solutions surely work I find them inconsistent with a meaningful approach to Git versioning.
- Why are you supposed to put bogus files or READMEs that maybe you don’t really want in your project?
- Why use
.gitignore
to do a thing (keeping files) that is the very opposite of what it’s meant for (excluding files), even though it is possible?
.gitkeep approach
Use an empty file called .gitkeep
in order to force the presence of the folder in the versioning system.
Although it may seem not such a big difference:
- You use a file that has the single purpose of keeping the folder. You don’t put there any info you don’t want to put.
For instance, you should use READMEs as, well, READMEs with useful information, not as an excuse to keep the folder.
Separation of concerns is always a good thing, and you can still add a
.gitignore
to ignore unwanted files. - Naming it
.gitkeep
makes it very clear and straightforward from the filename itself (and also to other developers, which is good for a shared project and one of the core purposes of a Git repository) that this file is- A file unrelated to the code (because of the leading dot and the name)
- A file clearly related to Git
- Its purpose (keep) is clearly stated and consistent and semantically opposed in its meaning to ignore.
Another way to make a directory stay (almost) empty (in the repository) is to create a .gitignore
file inside that directory that contains these four lines:
# Ignore everything in this directory
*
# Except this file
!.gitignore