Track and push empty folders in Git

My directory structure & files location is like below one.

parent_dir/sample.txt
parent_dir/child_dir/abc.txt
parent_dir/child_dir/xyz.txt

The requirement is that I need to ignore all files in child_dir. But I need to include the empty child_dir in my source.

There is no direct option to achieve the requirement in git because git only tracks files and not folders.

The solution is simple. Never empty the directory!

Solution 1

The .gitignore file in root folder is given below.

parent_dir/child_dir/*.txt

Put this .gitignore into the folder. Then add that .gitignore file with our source.

*
*/
!.gitignore

The file name gitignore, makes some confusion in future. So I always prefer the second solution.

Solution 2

Add an empty file called .gitkeep to the folder we want to keep. Modify our .gitignore file like below one.

# exclude everything
parent_dir/child_dir/*

# exception to the rule
!parent_dir/child_dir/.gitkeep

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This article was published on April 26, 2022

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