f. Directories

Two important facts you should know about directories in Git.

1. Git does not track directories on their own, only files within them. Try it for yourself:

   $ mkdir spaceships
   $ git status
   $ git add spaceships
   $ git status
   

   Note, our newly created empty directory spaceships does not appear in the list of untracked files even if we explicitly add it (via git add) to our repository. This is the reason why you will sometimes see .gitkeep files in otherwise empty directories. Unlike .gitignore, these files are not special and their sole purpose is to populate a directory so that Git adds it to the repository. In fact, you can name such files anything you like.

2. If you create a directory in your Git repository and populate it with files, you can add all files in the directory at once by:

   git add <directory-with-files
   

   Try it for yourself:

   $ touch spaceships/apollo-11 spaceships/sputnik-1
   $ git status
   $ git add spaceships
   $ git status
   

   Before moving on, we will commit these changes.

   $ git commit -m "Add some initial thoughts on spaceships"
   

To recap, when we want to add changes to our repository, we first need to add the changed files to the staging area (git add) and then commit the staged changes to the repository (git commit):