Tracking directories in Mercurial

[Fredrik Jonson]

In <25232006.post at talk.nabble.com> jeffm712 wrote:
 
>  I know that right now Mercurial doesn't track directories. But in our
>  projects, often the first thing we do is create a project structure.

I'm not a fan of using dummy files either, they distract from the actual
project content, and it's easy to forget to remove them once there is real
content in the project.

The recommended way is to have your build system create the directory
structure if it is not there when it builds the project the first time.

>  Example: http://java.sun.com/blueprints/code/projectconventions.html#25692

Your example references J2EE 1.4 which is somewhat obsolete. Maybe the
project structure is also somewhat obsolete? A better example is Maven,
its convention over configuration actually helps here, especially for
complex systems with many sub components build separately. I'm not saying
that you have to switch build system, but if you have a chance take a look
on the maven default directory structure.  It is not overwhelming and it
easily gets into your fingers after a while - even when you add new
artifacts to a project you seldom have to think twice about where to put
it or what the directory is supposed to be named.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Maven
<http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/
introduction-to-the-standard-directory-layout.html>

-- 
Fredrik Jonson