GitHub Navigation Issue

[adanieljohnson]

This is definitely a novice GitHub user question, but we all start somewhere. Is there no simple way to create folders inside of GitHub? I can create folders in my local copy of a repo then push them, but seems like it would be handy to be able to do it directly inside the repo.

[francojc]

Technically you cannot create an empty folder/directory in GitHub --either pushing from your local repository or directly on the GitHub repository. To work around this limitation, you need to create a directory with a file named '.gitkeep' inside this directory. The prefixed '.' means the file is hidden from view on your OS and only serves as a placeholder to ensure the directory will be tracked by git/GitHub.

This issue is discussed on StackOverflow here. The relevant instructions for creating the 'empty' directory are these:

• go to the repository (and folder inside which you want to create another folder)
• click on New file
• on the text field for the file name, first write the folder name you want to create
• then add a final "/" which will create a folder and open a new field for a filename
• then create the file named '.gitkeep' (which is conventionally used to make git track otherwise empty folders, not a git feature though)
• finally click Commit new file (at the bottom of the page)

I hope this helps.

[adanieljohnson]

That's what I needed! D

[francojc]

Great.