Re: Handling empty directories in Git

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

> The reason would be closer to "there is a valuable reason, but not
> valuable enough to change Git to do it". It's actually not so easy to
> track directories properly. Storing them in the Git repository is
> actually possible (actually, an empty tree is a special case of this,
> and is obviously supported), but defining and implementing a decent
> behavior for each Git command wrt this is not trivial.
>
> David Kastrup gave it a try a few years ago. I don't remember exactly
> what made him give up, but it was never completed and merged.

Oh, most likely what afflicts most of my unfinished projects.  I lost
focus at some point of time.  I don't remember any fundamentally
unsolvable problems, but then I don't remember much at all.  There were
some annoyances with sorting order (either regarding the sorting of xxx/
or . or ./ or whatever) and some other stuff.

If anybody wants to take a look at the direction of unfinished stuff,
I can see whether there are some old backups with git repos in my
possession.  But I really have no idea how much of the design might have
ended up in actual comments or code, and how much on some scraps of
paper or half-committed memory, and how much of that might have been
invalidated by other scraps of paper and half-committed memory.

So there is not likely to be more than food for thought recoverable.

I'm amused that you remember me being involved with that.  I think
I myself had forgotten all about it until recently.  I don't even
recollect what made me remember again: looking at some old repo/commit
or searching in some old mailing list archive.

-- 
David Kastrup