Re: why still no empty directory support in git

From: Asheesh Laroia <asheesh@asheesh.org>
Date: Dec 30, 2008, 06:25 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0812300113050.22107@vellum.laroia.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0812300008060.31590@vellum.laroia.net>

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008, Asheesh Laroia wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Tue, 30 Dec 2008, Ping Yin wrote:
>
>> 2. unclear logic, for example, whether to remove the directory after the 
>> last file in it is deleted
>
> This is the thing I dislike most about git: that it sometimes calls rmdir() 
> for me.  At least, one should be able to turn it off in a per-repository 
> basis.  I'm going to see how hard a patch that would be to write.

Well, changing this behavior seems to be "as easy as" changing unlink_entry in unpack_trees.c to not always rmdir(). The most naive thing I can think of is to have unlink_entry in unpack_trees check against the git config. It's probably more sensible for unpack_trees to be passed an argument that determines if it rmdir()s; that argument could be set via argv at "git unpack-tree" time, which could be set out of a configuration value read at "git" time.

Would a change of the "more sensible" kind possibly be accepted by the git maintainer?

I ask about this because I'm using git to track email in Maildir repositories, and in that vein I'm getting bitten by git's removal of empty directories.

-- Asheesh.

-- 
You will gain money by an illegal action.