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

Note: An empty directory cannot be part of a tree under the Git versioning system. An empty directory simply won't be tracked. But there are cases where 'versioning' empty directories can be meaningful. 

Here's an example of such scenarios:

• Scaffolding a predefined folder structure, making it available to every user or contributor of the repository; or, as a specialized case of the above, creating a folder for temporary files, such as logs/ or a cache/ directory, where we want to provide the folder but .gitignore its contents.
• Related to the above point, some projects won't work without some folders (which is often a hint of a poorly designed project, but it's a frequent real-world scenario and there could be permission problems to be addressed as well).

A very common suggestion is to place a README file or another file with some content in order to make the directory non-empty, or

Another way is to create a .gitignore file with a sort of 'reverse logic' (i.e. to include all the files) which, at the end, serves the same purpose of approach #1.

While both solutions surely work I find them inconsistent with a meaningful approach to Git versioning. 

• Why would you even put bogus files or README files that maybe you don't really want in your project?
• Why would you use .gitignore to do a thing (keeping files) that is the very opposite of what it's meant for (excluding files), even though it is possible? 

Here's another way, .gitkeep approach:

In this approach, we will use an empty file called .gitkeep in order to force the presence of the folder in the versioning system. 

• Although it may seem not such a big difference, using a file that has the single purpose of keeping the folder. You don't put there any info you don't want to put. 
• Naming it .gitkeep makes it very clear and straightforward from the filename itself (and also to other developers, which is good for a shared project and one of the core purposes of a Git repository) that this file is
  • A file unrelated to the code (because of the leading dot and the name)
  • A file clearly related to Git
  • Its purpose (keep) is clearly stated and consistent and semantically opposed in its meaning to ignore

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