mjhjmtu

I have created the directory structure for my Maven project.

$ tree -a -I .git
.
├── .gitignore
├── README.md
├── pom.xml
└── src
 ├── main
 │   ├── java
 │   └── resources
 └── test
 ├── java
 └── resources

7 directories, 2 files

Now I'd like to persist the structure to .git, which requires creating dummy files in sub-directories. How can I (recursively) add empty .gitkeep files to all empty sub-directories?

Following questions already discuss (recursive) creation of empty files in sub-directories, but I'd like the files to be created only in leaf directories and not in any intermediate directories

• Creating empty files in all subfolders


• Recursively add a file to all sub-directories

From Ryan Armstrong's blog, here's how you do it

find . -type d -empty -not -path "./.git/*" -exec touch /.gitkeep ;

• 
  find . -type d (recursively) looks for directories under current path


• 
  -empty filters out directories that already contain something


• 
  -not -path "./.git/*" ensures no files are created inside .git directory


• 
  -exec touch /.gitkeep ; creates empty .gitkeep file in each directory matching above criteria

The resulting structure looks like

$ tree -a -I .git
.
├── .gitignore
├── README.md
├── pom.xml
└── src
 ├── main
 │   ├── java
 │   │   └── .gitkeep
 │   └── resources
 │   └── .gitkeep
 └── test
 ├── java
 │   └── .gitkeep
 └── resources
 └── .gitkeep

7 directories, 7 files