Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

adamj.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 101 posts

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#11

Post by akerl_ »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #5
williadc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you don't want to check-in any builds.

Sure, so gitignore build/ or whatever. But you don't need to unignore .gitkeep

The idea is that instead of adding a nonsense file, you use the native .gitignore functionality.

".gitkeep" is just a human thing; it would work the same if you called it ".blahblah".

So their pitch is that if you want to explicitly keep the existence of the directory as a committed part of the repo, you're better off using the actual .gitignore functionality to check in the .gitignore file but ignore anything else in the directory.

I don't find it amazingly compelling; .gitkeep isn't breaking anything.

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#12

Post by Arrowmaster »

The author makes a very common mistake of not reading the very first line of the documentation for .gitignore.

  A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that Git should ignore. Files already tracked by Git are not affected; see the NOTES below for details.
You should never be putting "!.gitignore" in .gitignore. Just do `echo "*" > .gitignore; git add -f .gitignore`. Once a file is tracked any changes to it will be tracked without needing to use --force with git add.

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#13

Post by dwattttt »

akerl_ wrote: post #11
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, so gitignore build/ or whatever. But you don't need to unignore .gitkeep

The idea is that instead of adding a nonsense file, you use the native .gitignore functionality. ".gitkeep" is just a human thing; it would work the same if you called it ".blahblah". So their pitch is that if you want to explicitly keep the existence of the directory as a committed part of the repo, you're better off using the actual .gitignore functionality to check in the .gitignore file but ignore anything else i…

This still confuses me. Do you mean to say "use the .gitignore functionality, and check in the .gitkeep file"?

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#15

Post by akoboldfrying »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #9
macote wrote: post #7

The author is misusing .gitkeep. I use it to keep source code folders that don’t contain any code yet, but whose structure is already defined.

Truly, what purpose does this serve? Defining a hierarchy without using is injecting immediate debt. Just introduce it when stuff goes there! If you really insist then at least put something in the folder. It doesn't take much effort to make the change at least a tiny bit meaningful. Better yet just do the work. If you want make a commit in a branch that's destined to be squashed or something, sure, but keep it away…

> Truly, what purpose does this serve?

The simplest answer is that sometimes other existing software that I need to use treats an empty directory (or, hopefully, a directory containing just an irrelevant file like .gitkeep) differently from an absent directory, and I want that software to behave in the first way instead of the second.

A more thorough answer would be: Filesystems can represent empty directories, so a technology that supports versioned filesystems should be able to as well. And if that technology can't quite support fully versioned filesystems -- perhaps because it was never designed with that goal in mind -- but can nevertheless support them well enough to cover a huge number of use cases that people actually have, then massaging it a bit to handle those rough edges still makes sense.

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#16

Post by ekipan »

Arrowmaster wrote: post #12

The author makes a very common mistake of not reading the very first line of the documentation for .gitignore. A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that Git should ignore. Files already tracked by Git are not affected; see the NOTES below for details. You should never be putting "!.gitignore" in .gitignore. Just do `echo "*" > .gitignore; git add -f .gitignore`. Once a file is tracked any changes…

Yeah, this. Plus a mistake from the article:

  $ echo '*\n!.gitignore' > build/.gitignore
The \n won't be interpreted specially by echo unless it gets the -e option.

Personally if I need a build directory I just have it mkdir itself in my Makefile and rm -rf it in `make clean`. With the article's scheme this would cause `git status` noise that a `/build/` line in a root .gitignore wouldn't. I'm not really sure there's a good tradeoff there.

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#18

Post by AgentME »

Arrowmaster wrote: post #12

The author makes a very common mistake of not reading the very first line of the documentation for .gitignore. A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that Git should ignore. Files already tracked by Git are not affected; see the NOTES below for details. You should never be putting "!.gitignore" in .gitignore. Just do `echo "*" > .gitignore; git add -f .gitignore`. Once a file is tracked any changes…

If you have a project template or a tool that otherwise sets up a project but leaves it in the user's hands to create a git repo for it or commit the project into an existing repo, then it would be better for it to create a self-excepting .gitignore file than to have to instruct the user on special git commands to use later.

Re: Don't create .gitkeep files, use .gitignore instead (2023)

#20

Post by abustamam »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #9
macote wrote: post #7

The author is misusing .gitkeep. I use it to keep source code folders that don’t contain any code yet, but whose structure is already defined.

Truly, what purpose does this serve? Defining a hierarchy without using is injecting immediate debt. Just introduce it when stuff goes there! If you really insist then at least put something in the folder. It doesn't take much effort to make the change at least a tiny bit meaningful. Better yet just do the work. If you want make a commit in a branch that's destined to be squashed or something, sure, but keep it away…

I play around with ComfyUI on my computer to make silly images.

To manually install it, you must clone the repo. Then you have to download models into the right place. Where's the right place? Well, there's an empty directory called models. They go in there.

IMO that's an effective use of gitkeep.

Post reply on HN