Subject: Re: [1.8.0] Tracking empty directories

From: Pete Harlan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2011 23:43:48 -0800

On 02/02/2011 03:33 PM, David Aguilar wrote:
> I don't like where this is going. Users are not always right. Touch
> .gitignore and be done with it.  This is a big change with
> negligible benefits.  I don't understand why this is needed.

I worked for a huge company that was converting a large project to
Git.  They had a wiki about the conversion.  There was a section
titled "Git Gotchas" that had one entry: Git Doesn't Track Empty
Directories.

This has come up as something to be worked around in each of the
conversions to Git I've been part of.

And unlike other things Git doesn't track, such as permissions or
modification times, I can't argue that Git's behavior here is superior
to what they were expecting.  I'd love to see this feature in Git if
only to make the issue go away.  And I don't think it's a slippery
slope, that once this is in then they'll be clamoring for resource
forks and ACLs.  Developers know some things aren't handled by SCMs,
they just don't think that includes directories.

--Pete