Re: why still no empty directory support in git

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> writes:

> You can have an empty tree, but the index doesn't store them, so they
> would be lost on checkout/commit. Linus sketched a solution, but nobody
> took the bait. Seems doable if anyone really wants it, but I'm certain
> it adds a lot of special cases.

I think the original poster covered that "a lot of special cases" as
"unclear semantics", and there are more.  Do you want to have the presense
of empty directory "sticky"?  Perhaps it later becomes non-empty at some
point; will the "will always present" attribute kept then?  What happens
when such a directory becomes empty later?  What should happen when a
branch that has such a directory with "sticky existence" and another
branch with the same directory but without the stickiness are merged?

But I think one bigger reason missing from the list is that many people
loudly talked about "wants", but nobody made convincing argument on
"needs" of such a feature.