This may or may not be in the cards for you, but it seems you're setting up routing for a SPA.  Many client based routers offer **hash-based** routing precisely for this reason so that you don't have to configure your hosting provider to redirect urls to return index.

The landscape of solutions seems to be:

1. Use Hash-Based Routing

    
    
    <pre><code><b>USE</b>: https://example.com/index.html#inner/path
    <b>NOT</b>: https://example.com/inner/path</code></pre>

   * **React Router** - [`<HashRouter>`][7]
   * **Angular** - [`HashLocationStrategy`][8]
   * **Vue Router** - [`{mode: 'hash'}`][6]

2. Use the [custom 404 page][2] for gh-pages to [redirect all missed traffic back to index.html][3]
3. Choose a different [free static hosting provider][1] that allows basic url rewrites or redirects like:
  * [**netlify**][9]
  * [**surge.sh**][10]

It doesn't look like github supports this feature right now, so you'll either need to avoid deep link requests to the server or change to a hosting provider that allows you to do so.

**Further Reading**:

* [Can I create routes with react-router for a github-pages site?][4]
* [Add single page application support for Github pages][5]
* [S(GH)PA: The Single-Page App Hack For GitHub Pages][11]

[1]: https://codebushi.com/hosting-your-static-website/
[2]: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-custom-404-page-for-your-github-pages-site/
[3]: https://github.com/rafrex/spa-github-pages
[4]: https://stackoverflow.com/q/40776651/1366033
[5]: https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/408
[6]: https://router.vuejs.org/guide/essentials/history-mode.html#example-server-configurations
[7]: https://reacttraining.com/react-router/web/api/HashRouter
[8]: https://angular.io/api/common/HashLocationStrategy
[9]: https://www.netlify.com/
[10]: https://surge.sh/
[11]: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/08/sghpa-single-page-app-hack-github-pages/

I want to serve same index.html page for all (sub)urls in my app on gh-pages

is that possible?

right now when I go to repo/inner/path I get a 404

so I want to "force" github pages serve the same root index.html on all routes

gh-pages - share index.html for all routes

### [Configuring a publishing source for GitHub Pages][1] (very limited)

While you *can* select a folder as the source for gh-pages, you can *only* do so for the `/docs` directory at the parent level, and you *still* have to actually commit the built files in order to do so, which means you'll have to override the `.gitignore` and commit them twice

<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ggDJH.png" width="313"/>

### Automated Deploy Scripts

If you're using npm, there are a couple packages that handle publishing sub-directories to gh-pages.  Install with option `--save-dev` to add it to your `devDependencies`:

* [**push-dir**][2]

    
    
        # install
        $ npm install push-dir --save-dev
        
        # usage
        $ push-dir --dir=dist --branch=gh-pages

* [**gh-pages**][3]

    
    
        # install
        $ npm install gh-pages --save-dev
        
        # usage
        $ gh-pages -d dist

In either case, if get a command line tool working for you and get it configured with the right options, you can alias it in your `package.json` like this:



    "scripts": {
      "deploy": "npm run build && gh-pages -d dist"
    }

**Further Reading**: 

* [Deploying a subfolder to GitHub Pages][4]
* [Deploy Vue to GitHub pages-the easy way!][5]

[1]: https://help.github.com/articles/configuring-a-publishing-source-for-github-pages/
[2]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/push-dir
[3]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/gh-pages
[4]: https://gist.github.com/cobyism/4730490
[5]: https://medium.com/@codetheorist/vue-up-your-github-pages-the-right-way-955486220418

I was trying to publish my -username-.github.io repository to github pages but my `index.html` is inside `dist` folder.

I cannot use `git subtree push --prefix dist origin gh-pages` because this is meant for project pages, not user/org pages.

All I want is, github to treat dist as root directory for hosting user/org page.  Please help.Thanks

PS: I don't want to do redirection hack.
