Avoiding empty directory syndrome (was Re: ...)

[Andrew Cowie]

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 14:07 +0200, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> > The debian (unstable) directories all appear
> > to be empty.
> These are all bzr branches, which is why they appear empty.

I've always felt that that puts people off

        [Git does empty directories too, although their habit of
        publicly hosting .git  repositories .../path/to/blah.git rather
        than an empty .../path/to/blah with a .git in it helps a little.
        Ugly, though]

so we whipped up a tinsy PHP script to act as the DirectoryIndex in
directories under the /bzr/ tree on our R&D server, eg

http://research.operationaldynamics.com/bzr/slashtime/i18n/

rather than having Apache show an empty directory.

In the rare but important cases where we also have a public working tree
there, ie

http://research.operationaldynamics.com/bzr/java-gnome/mainline/

we put the directory listing after the branch warning, and then below
that we manually put out a directory listing more or less as Apache
would have if we'd left it alone. In directories containing branches,
and for repositories, we say something a little different in the
listing, ie

http://research.operationaldynamics.com/bzr/java-gnome/

I'm sure you could do better, but if anyone wants our kludgy PHP snippet
I can probably pass it along.

AfC
Sydney

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie

Operational Dynamics is an operations and engineering consultancy
focusing on IT strategy, organizational architecture, systems
review, and effective procedures for change management. We actively
carry out research and development in these areas on behalf of our
clients, and enable successful use of open source in their mission
critical enterprises, worldwide.

http://www.operationaldynamics.com/

Sydney   New York   Toronto   London
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