Can’t add folder in git

git

I add new folder (actually I cloned it from another repo, and forgot that), then I did some changes there. Additionally I did a lot of changes in another places, when I tried to do git add

# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#   (commit or discard the untracked or modified content in submodules)
#
#   modified:   protected/ext/SpecificFolder (modified content)
#

Then I remember that maybe there was .git folder (because previous I did git clone there).
I went to that folder and remove non needed files (folders) and .git folder too.
I checked git status, nothing strange. Then commit and checkout to another branch and suddenly I figure out that this folder was not added to last commit. Actually folder was added but files inside was ignored. Now even when I'm trying to do git add for that folder nothing happenning and git status do not show any changes 🙁

What can I do ?

Best Answer

Git doesn't track directories; but just the files within them.

It sounds like you might have an ignore pattern that is causing add to do nothing. You can see ignored files with git status --ignored; they can then be tracked with git add --force protected/ext/SpecificFolder

Related Solutions

Git can’t add files, sees changes

The index is usually stored at the top level of the .git directory of the repository. Its location can be overridden by using the GIT_INDEX_FILE environment variable (it might be worth checking that: printf '%s\n' "$GIT_INDEX_FILE").

If the index file’s directory was not writable you would get an earlier error message:

fatal: Unable to create '/path/to/.git/index.lock': Permission denied

We can be fairly sure that the containing directory is writable since you did not get this error message.

The error message you reported is issued near the very end of the activity for git add. Unfortunately the errno is not reported by git add; if it had been reported, we might be able to make a guess about the problem based on the reported error.

git add shows the error you reported if it has any problem writing out the contents of the new index (the contents is written into the .lock file) or when it tries to commit the lock-file (rename the .lock file to take the place of the existing index file; this is ‘committing’ the lock-file transaction, not what git commit does).

Disk Space Issue?

How is the free space on the volume that holds your index file? Maybe it is nearly full. I have been able to reproduce the error message when the index is on a volume that just enough free space to create the .lock file but not enough to hold the entire contents.

“Flag” Issue?

Are there any flags set on the index file? On my system having either uchg (“user-level immutable”) or uappnd (“user-level append-only”) set on the index file will cause git add to give the same error message you are getting. Check the flags with ls -lO on your index file (the flags are displayed after the group-owner and before the size; it will show - if there are no flags set). If you see flags, use the chflags command to remove them. You might want to investigate how the flags got there and whether any other files have them (perhaps with ls -lOR).

Use ktrace

If neither of the above suggestions prompts a solution, then you might break out ktrace and kdump to find out what system call is failing immediately before the error message is printed.

ktrace git add whatever
kdump | less
: Go to the bottom. Search for the error message.
: What CALL is RETurning -1? What is the reported errno?

When the volume is full, I see this:

 4728 git      CALL  write(0x9,0x116d24,0x18b0)
 4728 git      RET   write -1 errno 28 No space left on device
 4728 git      CALL  write(0x2,0xbfffcd00,0x26)
 4728 git      GIO   fd 2 wrote 38 bytes
      "fatal: Unable to write new index file
      "

When I have an incompatible flag set, I see this:

 4742 git      CALL  rename(0x105bdd,0xbfffdfa8)
 4742 git      NAMI  ".git/index.lock"
 4742 git      NAMI  ".git/index"
 4742 git      RET   rename -1 errno 1 Operation not permitted
 4742 git      CALL  write(0x2,0xbfffcd40,0x26)
 4742 git      GIO   fd 2 wrote 38 bytes
      "fatal: Unable to write new index file
      "

How to commit files modified by pre-commit hook in Git

You can do something like this:

#!/bin/sh
#

perl -i -pe 's/var app_version = "\d+\.\d+\.\K(\d+)/ $1+1 /e' ./version.js

git add ./version.js

What it does: It changes the string var app_version = "0.1.1"; to var app_version = "0.1.2"; and adds the file back to the git commit process. When you commit the latest change will be included.