How to track directories but not their files with Git?

Question

I\'ve recently started using Git and am having trouble with just one thing. How can I track directories without tracking their contents?

For example the site I\'m wo

Answer 1

Git doesn't track directories, it tracks files, so to acheive this you need to track at least one file. So assuming your .gitignore file looks something like this:

upload/*

You can do this:

$ touch upload/.placeholder
$ git add -f upload/.placeholder

If you forget the -f you'll see:

$ git add upload/.placeholder
The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
upload
Use -f if you really want to add them.
fatal: no files added

Then when you do git status you'll see:

# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git rm --cached ..." to unstage)
#
#   new file:   upload/.placeholder
#

Obviously you can then do:

$ touch upload/images/.placeholder
$ git add -f upload/images/.placeholder

Answer 2

I wrote about this here.

Add a .gitignore within the directory.

Answer 3

Best answerd I've found is to include a .gitignore file in your upload folder with this content

# Ignore everything in this directory
*
# Except this file
!.gitignore

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

Answer 4

In order to track only directories but not the files, I did the following. Thanks to the @PeterFarmer's comment on git tracking only files, I've been able to keep all directories excluding the files as described in below.

# exclude everything in every folder
/data/**/*.*

# include only .gitkeep files
!/data/**/*.gitkeep

Adding this to the .gitignore file will do the work. The following is my folder structure.

data/
├── processed
│   ├── dataset1.csv
│   └── dataset2.csv
├── raw
│   ├── raw_dataset1.json
└── test
    ├── subfolder
    │   └── dataset2.csv
    └── reviews.csv

When I do git add . && git status, git only recognizes folders, but not files.

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

        modified:   .gitignore
        new file:   data/processed/.gitkeep
        new file:   data/raw/.gitkeep
        new file:   data/test/.gitkeep
        new file:   data/test/subfolder/.gitkeep

Keep in mind that the following for your .gitignore files:

Prepending slash looks only for the root directory.

/dir

Double asterisk looks for zero or more directories.

/**/

Answer 5

The best solution so far:

1) Create a .gitignore file

2) Write inside:

*
*/
!.gitignore

3) Add the .gitignore file to the folder that you want.

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5581995/2958543