How can I add an empty directory to a Git repository?

Question

How can I add an empty directory (that contains no files) to a Git repository?

Answer 1

Let's say you need an empty directory named tmp :

$ mkdir tmp
$ touch tmp/.gitignore
$ git add tmp
$ echo '*' > tmp/.gitignore
$ git commit -m 'Empty directory' tmp

In other words, you need to add the .gitignore file to the index before you can tell Git to ignore it (and everything else in the empty directory).