Git - Won t add files

Question

I m having issues where I can t add files to my repository   I m using GIT on windows  in Aptana Studio for some Ruby development   I ve managed to push a few files up to GitHub  but then after this  everything s stopped working  I have for example a new sub-folder in my master directory  with 2 ruby files inside  If I call  git add     and then  git status  and it keeps saying  working directory clean  and has nothing to commit   I ve tried  git add folder myfile rb  and still nothing   Anyone any idea s what I can try

User · Answer

I found myself in a similar situation as the poster:

If I call "git add .", and then "git status" and it keeps saying "working directory clean" and has nothing to commit.

But I had a different solution than what's here. Since I came to this first, I hope to save others some time.

From the above answers and what I've seen elsewhere, the usual fixes to this problem are:

Ensure there are actually saved changes on the file in question
Ensure the file doesn't meet your exclude rules in .gitignore and .git/info/exclude
Ensure you're not trying to add an empty folder. Git won't track those. Standard solution is to place a blank file named .gitkeep as a placeholder so git will track the folder.

In my case, I had originally tried to create a git repo around an existing repo (not knowing it was there). I had removed the .git folder from this sub repo a while ago, but I didn't realize that it was too late, and git was already tracking it as a submodule. You can read more about how these behave and how to remove them here, but

the solution for me was to simply run git rm --cached path_to_submodule.

User · Answer

I am still a beginner at git  and it was just a stupid mistake I made  long story in one sentence  I was not in a subfolder as  gaoagong reported  but the other way round  in a parent folder  Strange enough  I did not get the idea from that answer  instead  the idea came up when I tested git add --all  see the long story below  Example in details  Actual repo   The Parent folder that I had opened mistakenly on parent level  vscode git in my case    I had cloned a repo  but I had a parent folder above this repo which I had opened instead  and then I tried adding a file of the subfolder s repo with git add  d  Stack Overflow vscode git vscode-java  github ISSUE TEMPLATE md   which simply did nothing  no warning message  and the git status afterwards said   nothing added to commit but untracked files present  use  quot git add quot  to track    Running git add --all gave me the yellow notes   warning  adding embedded git repository  vscode-java the embedded repository and will not know how to obtain it  hint  If you meant to add a submodule  use  git submodule add  vscode-java hint   If you added this path by mistake  you can remove it from the index with git rm --cached vscode-java See  quot git help submodule quot  for more information git   To fix this  I reverted the git add --all with git rm --cached -r -f --  quot d  Stack Overflow vscode git vscode-java quot  rm  vscode-java    Then  by simply opening the actual repo folder instead   the git worked as expected again  Of course the  quot  git quot  folder of the parent folder could be deleted then

User · Answer

I have tried all the above but nothing was working  Later on  I ran my command prompt as an admin and retried all the stages i e  staging- gt  committing- gt  remote add - gt  pushing  It worked like a magic  The changes were reflected in the desired remote repository

User · Answer

Issue git would not add a changed file  Using git bash  I had changed folder delimiting the folder name with the double quote  ls displayed the folder contents correctly but git would not add changed files   Solution I used the single quote to delimit the folder name    e g  CD  Folder Name  git status nothing to commit  working tree clean CD    ls   Folder Name  CD  Folder Name  git status modified  ModifiedFileName bat

User · Answer

How about the standard procedure   git add folder git commit   This will add the folder and all it s files with a single command  Please note  git is not able to store empty folders   If commit didn t worked  the first place you should check is probably  gitignore

User · Answer

If the file is excluded by  gitignore and you want to add it anyway  you can force it with   git add -f path to file ext

User · Answer

Another issue can be file permissions  Try issuing   chmod 755 file1

User · Answer

I searched around for a while and ended up finding out I had blocked off the SSH port which was what caused the git add command to stop working  I ended up changing origin using https with the following command  git remote set-url origin  url-to-git-repo

User · Answer

Best bet is to copy your folder  Delete the original  Clone the project from github  copy your new files into the new cloned folder  and then try again

User · Answer

Similar happened for me when I renamed a file between Uppercase Lowercase  So  temporary file renaming might fix problem

User · Answer

Here you can find an answer to the same problem   basically in this case the problem was the global git ignore

User · Answer

You can remove recursively the git initialised repo  cd repo added  git rm -rf git You can create a separate branch and link the submodules to the master branch The documentation on submodules is really useful Documentation  https   git-scm com book en v2 Git-Tools-Submodules  Also see some solutions in  https   stackoverflow com questions 36236484 maintaining-a-git-repo-inside-another-git-repo

User · Answer

I know this is a really old question  but I know it can happen to someone as well  turns out I was working with a file named AUX JS and thi is a reserved file name for windows  this produced the following error     fatal  unable to stat  src hoc Aux js   No such file or directory   so you can either remove the file or rename it  then it will work   Final conclusion  in addition to all other valid answers  if you are in a windows machine look out for the output of the  git add  command  it can also provide additional information

User · Answer

Silly solution from me  but I thought that it wasn t adding and pushing new files because github com wasn t showing the files I had just pushed   I had forgotten that the files I added were on a different branch   The files had push just fine   I had to switch from my master branch to the new branch in github to see them   Lost a few minutes on that one

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I was having this issue on Visual Studio  what worked for me was  1- Right click on the added file that is not being recognized by git  2- Select  Add excluded file to Source Control

User · Answer

To add to the possible solutions for other users    Make sure you have not changed the case of the folder name in Windows   I had a similar problem where a folder called Setup controlled by Git and hosted on GitHub  all development was done on a Windows machine    At some point I changed the folder to setup  lower case S   From that point on when I added new files to the setup folder they were stored in the setup folder and not the Setup folder  but I guess because I was developing on a Windows machine the existing Setup folder in git github was not changed to setup   The result was that I couldn t see all of the files in the setup in GitHub  I suspect that if I cloned the project on a  nix machine I would have seen two folders  Setup and setup   So make sure you have not changed the case of the containing folder on a Windows machine  if you have then I d suggest    Renaming the folder to something like setup-temp git add -A git commit -m  Whatever  Rename the folder back to what you want git add -A git commit -m  Whatever

User · Answer

Had the same issue with a repo that I cloned from SiteGround Git to my mac  The freshly cloned repo had a list of changed files that git status said needed to be added to the commit  but trying to add or checkout any of them didn t do anything at all   For some reason there were case changes in the filenames  e g   jpg -   JPG   The solution was to simply git mv the filename the OS was using to the name git was using  e g    git mv File That Wont Add txt File THAT WONT Add txt

User · Answer

Odd  but I fought with git all night to add a file   Turns out it was already added   Git wasn t picking up my changes  as the changes weren t being saved  as the file was inaccessible by my account  and my IDE wasn t reporting this over SSH   In short  check to make sure you don t have it already added to the repository

User · Answer

I think if you logout of the previous project in git bash and then try to add those files to the new project  It will work fine

User · Answer

In such cases  please check for rules in global  gitignore file and make sure that your folder does not fit into those

User · Answer

I had a similar issue   The problem was  on Windows  in the index  the file was added in a case different from what was in the unstaged area   For example  in the index  the file was name xx txt and in the unstaged area  the file was names Xx txt   Removed the file with the incorrect case from the index  xx txt    Then  I have been able to add the file with the correct case  Xx txt

User · Answer

Double check your  gitignore file to make sure that the file is able to be seen by Git  Likewise  there is a file  git info exclude that  excludes  files directories from the project  just like a  gitignore file would

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I had a problem where files from one folder wont get added to the Github source control  To solve that I deleted the  git folder that was created under that folder

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I recently experienced this issue on my computer running Windows 7  I am using the git command window interface  The solution was to be very careful about the case sensitivity of the file and directory names when doing the git add  Although git would not complain when the case did not exactly match the case of the Windows file system file and directory names it also would not add the files  There would be nothing to commit  Once I typed the file names with the exactly correct case they would be added and listed under the changes to be committed as I intended

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I had the same problem and it was because there was a program using some file and git throws an error in this case Visual Studio had locked that file

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Here is how I got mine to work  I started by git init   inside the directory with all the files folders that I wanted to include  I ran git add --all git add   git commit -m  quot uploaded fixed sources 3 quot  git push origin master  THEN I made another directory outside of the origin  I moved into that directory  then I cloned the existing git repo using the http          git file as set out on the page in github  Once it cloned the source  which had nothing more than a readme md  I copied all the files from the old directory into the new one with cp -rf            Then I added again  and then commited and pushed those edits  git add --all git add   git commit -m  quot uploaded fixed sources 4 quot  git push origin master  Don t ask me why  but this time they uploaded into the github site and appeared as files you can access in the  zip tarball

User · Answer

It s impossible  for me  to add the first file to an empty repository cloned from GitHub  You need to follow the link README  that GitHub suggests to create  After you create your first file online  you can work normally with git   This happened to me Nov 17  2016

User · Answer

In my case the issue was enabled SafeCrLf option  I am on windows with tortoise git  After disabling the option adding the files was not an issue anymore

User · Answer

I had this problem with the first program in the folder  I did  git add  then  git commit     git status   gave the error described i e   nothing to commit  working directory clean   I ended up deleting the  git file from the program folder  Then I did a new git init  git add and git commit and it worked

User · Answer

I just had this issue and the problem was that I was inside a directory and not at the top level  Once I moved to the top level it worked

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