Is it possible to make git to track empty folders?

Question

I read from this post which explains that to make git to track a folder there must atleast an empty file: ``` Currently the design of the Git index (staging area) only permits files to be listed and nobody competent enough to make the change to allow empty directories has cared enough about this situation to remedy it. Directories are added automatically when adding files inside them. That is, directories never have to be added to the repository, and are not tracked on their own. You can say "git add <dir>" and it will add the files in there. If you really need a directory to exist in checkouts you should create a file in it. ``` I have faced some problems because git not tracking empty folders, i am list a few: Problem1: I have a `apache/log` directory in one of my git repository. when I pushed it to server and run the website it didn't worked. Where it worked fine in my localsystem. after a lot of research i found out that `git push` did n't pushed the empty folder `/log`. the serve…

Accepted Answer

Personally I usually solve this by having a file called `dir.info` in every directory that has some text stating what the directory is there for.

However, if you need to create specific, empty, directories after a checkout with those directories possibly being specific to specific branches I would suggest git post-checkout hooks are made to order - you can have a list in your top level directory of the empty directories that are needed and not needed and with about 5 lines of python you can create them if required and delete those that are not.

I would probably do something like having `-` or `+` in the first char depending on which should be removed or added.

Something like, (with the error handling added):

```
import os

dirlist = open("Dirlist.Name", "rt")
for line in dirlist:
    flag = line[0]
    name = line[1:].strip()
    if flag == '+':
        os.makedirs(name)
    elif flag == '-':
        os.removedirs(name)
    else:
        print "Ignored:", line
```

Is it possible to make git to track empty folders?

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