Unable to create empty file

[Ashvin-Ranjan]

When attempting to commit an empty file to a repository using ghClient.Repositories.CreateFile and passing in []byte{} under the Content field of a github.RepositoryContentFileOptions the GitHub API will return a 422 error stating that content was not supplied. This is most likely due to the line:

go-github/github/repos_contents.go

Line 54 in 7a7a7f0

Content []byte `json:"content,omitempty"` // unencoded

Which adds omitempty to the Content field of github.RepositoryContentFileOptions, even though it is a necessary field of the request.

[gmlewis]

Have you tried calculating the SHA of an empty byte slice?

$ touch bogus
$ shasum bogus
da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709  bogus
$ ls -la bogus
-rw-rw-r-- 1 glenn glenn 0 Aug  1 19:06 bogus

Try passing in this SHA when your file is empty and see if that works.

[Ashvin-Ranjan]

That does not work, I continue to get a 422 from the GitHub API because the "content" field was not supplied, here is the error message I get:

PUT https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/contents/FILE: 422 Invalid request.

"content" wasn't supplied.

[gmlewis]

OK, gotcha. Then I think we have a bug that needs to be fixed. My main concern is that we don't break existing behavior where content should not be passed.

Do you want to submit a PR or would you like me to open this up to other contributors to this repo to address?

[Ashvin-Ranjan]

I do not think there should be any problems with breaking existing behavior with this because looking at the update file contents endpoint it does appear that they label the content field required, unless I am mistaken. Also I can submit a PR for this. Thank you for your help.