markemptydirs-cpp | Manages placeholder files necessary to version control

markemptydirs-cpp is a C++ library. markemptydirs-cpp has no bugs, it has no vulnerabilities and it has low support. However markemptydirs-cpp has a Non-SPDX License. You can download it from GitHub.

CVS, Mercurial, Git as well as other well-known version control systems cannot version directories. In other words, you cannot add empty directories! A "workaround" for this issue is to use marker files which are placed into empty directories. These marker files can then be committed into the repository and will make sure that, upon checkout, the directory tree is entirely reconstructed. This solution is also suggested in the Mercurial FAQ, or in the Git FAQ, for instance. Note however, that using that workaround might not be a good idea. Creating missing directories during a build process should also be considered as an option. Sometimes a solution where the missing directories are created by some magic is not practicable and people will face the problem of managing such marker files. In particular, the problem with using marker files is that you need to create them, and delete them, if they are not necessary anymore (because there were added sub-directories or files). With big source trees managing these marker files can be cumbersome and error prone. In the past, I had been confronted with such a situation several times. This is why I decided to write an open source tool which can manage the creation/deletion of such marker files automatically. It creates marker files in all empty "leaf" directories. If later on new files or directories are put into such directories, the marker files are not necessary anymore and, thus, are removed automatically.