Reference directory from master branch on gh-pages branch

Question

I followed the GitHub instructions to create a gh-pages branch for a javascript library. The library's build script uses JsDocs to create a docs directory - I would like my GitHub page to be able to reference those documents.

I have been manually copying the docs directory from master to gh-pages , but I think a better solution would be to either:

• Set up my gh-pages branch to reference the docs directory on master , or
• Create some type of hook that copies only the docs directory to gh-pages whenever someone commits to master

How can I provide this documentation to users with minimal effort and lessen the chance of falling out of sync?

Answer 1

The following will save you from having to checkout the other branch to get at those files:

you can get another branches version of a directory with

git checkout master -- path/to/my/docs/dir

you can list files in a directory in another branch with

git ls-files $(git rev-parse master) -- path/to/my/docs/dir

you can stream a specific file from another branch with

git show master:path/to/my/docs/dir/somefile.txt

Hope this is enough to get you to the next step.