>committing a ".emptydir" file in each directory would be easier.
why bother making it .emptydir (ie, with the dot) when that makes it invisible on broken host systems (with the ls bug) but visible under inferno itself. more important, and the reason i didn't do that, if it's visible under inferno itself, it breaks the point of some of those directories being there, and empty: you're supposed to be able to enumerate services by listing names subsequently bound to them.