Random 'concerns' folders and '.keep' files

Question

I am learning rails.

Somewhere along the line, I noticed that seemingly random folders and files are appearing in my rails app\'s directory. In some folders there i

Answer 1

.keep files are especially helpful when you want to commit empty directories with git.

Fun fact, the name .keep or .gitkeep is meaningless. you can call the file .foo for the same effect, its merely a readable convention.

The .keep files are also there to aid portage from one vcs to another, preventing the deletion of important directories when you un-merge something that would cause those directories to be empty.

For example, consider a script which attempts to cd dir into a directory that is untracked by git.

It's a software design paradigm which seeks to decrease the number of decisions that developers need to make, gaining simplicity, but not necessarily losing flexibility.