Fall back to a README-&.md file for folde rendering when no README.md exists

[akonsta]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

Body

Summary

When a directory has no canonical README (README.md, README.rst, README.txt, …), fall back to rendering a README-*.md file as that folder's front page.

Proposed selection rule (deterministic)

1. If a canonical README exists, use it — unchanged, no behavior change.
2. Otherwise, among files matching README-*.md, pick the one last touched by a commit (the most recent commit affecting that path).
3. Tie-break (one commit touched several): alphabetical by filename.

Why

Maintainers could give directory READMEs distinct, disambiguated filenames (README-context.md, README-api.md) — nicer in editors, fuzzy-finders, and search — without losing folder-front-page auto-render. Today the only workaround is a README.md symlink.

Why this rule specifically

It uses only git-preserved, deterministic signals (commit history + filename), so the same commit always renders the same page. File modification time would not work: git does not preserve mtime, so every file shares the clone timestamp. Scoped to activate only when no canonical README is present, so it is fully backward-compatible.

Prior art / evidence people already need this

• Discussion #72144 ("How do I make another file the standard instead of README.md") — answered only with the README.md-symlink workaround.
• Discussion #163997 (README precedence) — in its comments, multiple users independently report renaming their README to README-internal.md / github-README.md as a workaround, losing auto-render in the process. This is exactly the README-*.md pattern proposed here — people are already using it; it just isn't recognized.

This request proposes the deterministic fallback that would make those workarounds render correctly.

The symlink workaround is also not robust cross-platform: git symlinks require core.symlinks=true / developer mode on Windows, and otherwise a cloned README.md shows as raw text (the link path) instead of rendering. So today there is no reliable way to give a directory README a distinct filename and still have it auto-render — which is what this proposal fixes.

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[xusnitdinov]

I think this is a reasonable request, especially because the current workaround is awkward on Windows and not very discoverable.

The strongest part of your proposal is that it only activates when no canonical README exists, so it would not change current behavior for existing repositories. That makes it much safer than changing README precedence globally.

I also agree with avoiding filesystem modification time here. In Git clones, mtime is not a durable semantic signal, so commit history is a much better deterministic choice.

If GitHub ever implemented this, I think your fallback should probably stay intentionally narrow:

• only when no canonical README exists
• only for something like README-*.md
• deterministic tie-breaker, like the one you proposed

That keeps it understandable and avoids a messy "guess which file is the real README" situation.

The symlink point is also important. On paper it works, but in practice it is not a great cross-platform answer for everyone, especially on Windows.

So overall, this sounds like a good backward-compatible product improvement rather than a behavior change that would surprise existing repos.