From: Leila Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:51:23 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-status: Show empty directories Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7vehpl7pn0.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 12:57 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Leila writes: > >>> Having said all that, I personally doubt this is a useful change.  I >>> may have thought of adding a README file to a relatively new project that >>> does not yet have one while in shower but I haven't even created the >>> file in the working tree.  And I forget about it once I get to the >>> office.  Should the system remind me to create README and then add? >>> Your patch would not give me such a reminder once the top-level >>> directory is populated (because it is no longer empty).  Even if I >>> were planning to add Documentation/README instead, I would get such >>> a reminder only if the Documentation directory is empty. Once the >>> directory is populated, I wouldn't get "create README and then add". >>> Why should an empty directory so special? > Please read what you quoted again.  I may have forgotten to create > and add README > >  - at the toplevel directory; or > >  - in the Documentation directory that already has other tracked >   files; or > >  - in the Documentation directory that does not have any file yet. > > Why do I get a reminder for only the last case?  Also please realize > that at no point in the scenario I am interested in adding an empty > directory.  "How does one add empty directories" is irrelevant to my > question. > > A more reasonable answer would have been "the reminder is not about > a yet-to-be-created README file, but is about an empty directory you > might have wanted to place something---there is no way for Git to > guess that you wanted the new file to be README, but at least having > a totally empty directory laying around may be an indication that > you wanted to do something intereseting in it but haven't yet".  If > the proposed commit log message justified the behaviour to treat > only the third one specially that way, I suspect it may make some > sense. I apologize, I misread the scenario and thought you were asking a different question. The patch/new implementation I put forth reminds you that you have an empty dir. The reminder that you have an empty dir isn't about a yet-to-be-created README file, but about an empty directory that you may have wanted to do something interesting in but haven't yet (like create a README/some other file or delete it even). It servers as helpful reminder to do something with that empty dir. Is that better?