How to track untracked content

Question

See below the solid line for my original question   I have a folder in my local directory that is untracked  When I run git status  I get   Changed but not updated  modified    vendor plugins open flash chart 2  modified content  untracked content    When I type git add vendor plugins open flash chart 2 then try git status again  it still says untracked  What s going on       Here is a simple summary of my latest half hour    Discovered that my Github repo is not tracking my vendor plugins open flash chart 2 plugin  Specifically  there s no content and it s showing a green arrow on the folder icon  Tried git submodule init  No submodule mapping found in  gitmodules for path  vendor plugins open flash chart 2   Tried git submodule add git   github com korin open flash chart 2 plugin git vendor plugins open flash chart 2  vendor plugins open flash chart 2 already exists in the index  git status    modified  vendor plugins open flash chart 2  untracked content   Hunted for any file named  gitmodules in my repository local directory but couldn t find one    What do I have to do to get my submodules working so git can start tracking properly     This may be unrelated  I include it in case it helps   but every time I type git commit -a rather than my usual git commit -m  my comments   it throws up an error   E325  ATTENTION Found a swap file by the name   git  COMMIT-EDITMSG swp           dated  Thu Nov 11 19 45 05 2010      file name  c  san project  git COMMIT EDITMSG       modified  YES      user name  San   host name  San-PC     process ID  4268 While opening file   git COMMIT EDITMSG           dated  Thu Nov 11 20 56 09 2010   NEWER than swap file    Swap file   git  COMMIT EDITMSG swp  already exists   O pen Read-Only   E dit anyway   R ecover   D elete it   Q uit   A bort  Swap file   git  COMMIT EDITMSG swp  already exists   O pen Read-Only   E dit anyway   R ecover   D elete it   Q uit   A bort    I am a complete newbie at Github and despite trying to go through the documentation  I m a bit stumped by these particular problems  Thank you

User · Answer

I just had the same problem  The reason was because there was a subfolder that contained a   git  folder  Removing it made git happy

User · Answer

I use the trick suggested by Peter Lada all the time  dubbed as  fake submodules    http   debuggable com posts git-fake-submodules 4b563ee4-f3cc-4061-967e-0e48cbdd56cb  It s very useful in several scenarios  p e  I use it to keep all my Emacs config in a repository  including the current HEAD of all git repositories inside the elpa el-get package directories  so I could easily roll back forward to a known working version when some update breaks something

User · Answer

http   progit org book ch6-6 html  I think you should read this to learn a little about submodule  It s well-written  and it doesn t take much time to read it

User · Answer

You have added vendor plugins open flash chart 2 as    gitlink    entry  but never defined it as a submodule  Effectively you are using the internal feature that git submodule uses   gitlink entries  but you are not using the submodule feature itself   You probably did something like this   git clone git   github com korin open flash chart 2 plugin git vendor plugins open flash chart 2 git add vendor plugins open flash chart 2   This last command is the problem  The directory vendor plugins open flash chart 2 starts out as an independent Git repository  Usually such sub-repositories are ignored  but if you tell git add to explicitly add it  then it will create an gitlink entry that points to the sub-repository   s HEAD commit instead of adding the contents of the directory  It might be nice if git add would refuse to create such    semi-submodules      Normal directories are represented as tree objects in Git  tree objects give names  and permissions to the objects they contain  usually other tree and blob objects   directories and files  respectively   Submodules are represented as    gitlink    entries  gitlink entries only contain the object name  hash  of the HEAD commit of the submodule  The    source repository    for a gitlink   s commit is specified in the  gitmodules file  and the  git config file once the submodule has been initialized    What you have is an entry that points to a particular commit  without recording the source repository for that commit  You can fix this by either making your gitlink into a proper submodule  or by removing the gitlink and replacing it with    normal    content  plain files and directories    Turn It into a Proper Submodule  The only bit you are missing to properly define vendor plugins open flash chart 2 as a submodule is a  gitmodules file  Normally  if you had not already added it as bare gitlink entry   you would just use git submodule add   git submodule add git   github com korin open flash chart 2 plugin git vendor plugins open flash chart 2   As you found  this will not work if the path already exists in the index  The solution is to temporarily remove the gitlink entry from the index and then add the submodule   git rm --cached vendor plugins open flash chart 2 git submodule add git   github com korin open flash chart 2 plugin git vendor plugins open flash chart 2   This will use your existing sub-repository  i e  it will not re-clone the source repository  and stage a  gitmodules file that looks like this    submodule  vendor plugins open flash chart 2       path   vendor plugins open flash chart 2     url   git   github com korin open flash chart 2 plugin git vendor plugins open flash chart 2   It will also make a similar entry in your main repository   s  git config  without the path setting    Commit that and you will have a proper submodule  When you clone the repository  or push to GitHub and clone from there   you should be able to re-initialize the submodule via git submodule update --init   Replace It with Plain Content  The next step assumes that your sub-repository in vendor plugins open flash chart 2 does not have any local history that you want to preserve  i e  all you care about is the current working tree of the sub-repository  not the history    If you have local history in the sub-repository that you care about  then you should backup the sub-repository   s  git directory before deleting it in the second command below   Also consider the git subtree example below that preserves the history of the sub-repository   s HEAD    git rm --cached vendor plugins open flash chart 2 rm -rf vendor plugins open flash chart 2  git   BACK THIS UP FIRST unless you are sure you have no local changes in it git add vendor plugins open flash chart 2   This time when adding the directory  it is not a sub-repository  so the files will be added normally  Unfortunately  since we deleted the  git directory there is no super-easy way to keep things up-to-date with the source repository   You might consider using a subtree merge instead  Doing so will let you easily pull in changes from the source repository while keeping the files    flat    in your repository  no submodules   The third-party git subtree command is a nice wrapper around the subtree merge functionality   git rm --cached vendor plugins open flash chart 2 git commit -m converting to subtree  please stand by  mv vendor plugins open flash chart 2    ofc2 local git subtree add --prefix vendor plugins open flash chart 2    ofc2 local HEAD  rm -rf    ofc2 local   if HEAD was the only tip with local history   Later   git remote add ofc2 git   github com korin open flash chart 2 plugin git git subtree pull --prefix vendor plugins open flash chart 2 ofc2 master  git subtree push --prefix vendor plugins open flash chart 2 git github com me my ofc2 fork git changes for pull request   git subtree also has a --squash option that lets you avoid incorporating the source repository   s history into your history but still lets you pull in upstream changes

User · Answer

I solved this issue by deleting  git file from my subfolder   First delete  git file from your subfolder Then remove your subfolder from git by running this code  git rm -rf --cached your subfolder name Then again add your folder by git add   command

User · Answer

I had the same problem with a big project with many submodules  Based on the answers of Chris Johnsen here and VonC here I build a short bash script which iterates through all existing gitlink entries and adds them as proper submodules      bin bash    Read all submodules in current git MODULES  git ls-files --stage   grep 160000     Iterate through every submodule path while read -r MOD  do     extract submodule path  split line at whitespace and take string with index 3    ARRIN    MOD     MODPATH   ARRIN 3        grep module url from  git file in submodule path   MODURL  grep  url      MODPATH  git config    MODURL   MODURL           echo path and url for information   echo  MODPATH   echo  MODURL      remove existing entry in submodule index   git rm --cached  MODPATH     add new entry in submodule index   git submodule add  MODURL  MODPATH done  lt  lt  lt    MODULES    This fixed it for me  I hope it is of any help

User · Answer

This worked out just fine for me   git update-index --skip-worktree  If it doesn t work with the pathname  try the filename  Let me know if this worked for you too   Bye

User · Answer

Had the same problem  but it was not solved in this discussion   I hit also the submodule problem as described in the thread opening     git status             On branch master   Changes not staged for commit      modified    bundle taglist  untracked content    Looking at the diff I recognized a -dirty appended to a hash  Reading the docs again  solved the problem for me   http   web mit edu jhawk mnt spo git git-doc user-manual html  Look at section  Pitfalls with submodules   Reason was  there were changes or untracked content within the submodule  I first had to got to the submodule directory  do a  git add     git commit  to get all content tracked within the submodule    Then  git status  on the master stated   git commit   On branch master   Changes not staged for commit      modified    bundle taglist  new commits    Now this new HEAD from the submodule could be commited to the master module

User · Answer

To point out what I had to dig out of Chris Johansen s chat with OP  linked from a reply to an answer    git add vendor plugins open flash chart 2   will add gitlink  content will stay untracked  git add vendor plugins open flash chart 2    NOTICE THE SLASH      The second form will add it without gitlink  and the contents are trackable  The  git dir is conveniently  amp  automatically ignored  Thank you Chris

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This question has been answered already  but thought I d add to the mix what I found out when I got these messages   I have a repo called playground that contains a number of sandbox apps  I added two new apps from a tutorial to the playground directory by cloning the tutorial s repo  The result was that the new apps  git stuff pointed to the tutorial s repo and not to my repo  The solution was to delete the  git directory from each of those apps  directories  mv the apps  directories outside the playground directory  and then mv them back and run git add    After that it worked

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I recently encountered this problem while working on a contract project deemed classified   The system in which I had to run the code did not have internet access  for security purposes of course  and so installing dependencies  using composer and npm  was becoming huge pain   After much deliberation with my colleague  we decided to just wing it and copy paste our dependencies rather than doing composer install or npm  install   This led us to NOT add vendors and npm modules in gitignore  This is when I encountered this problem   Changed but not updated  modified    vendor plugins open flash chart 2  modified content  untracked content    I googled this a bit and found this helpful thread on SO  Not being too much of a pro in Git  and being a little intoxicated while working on it  I just searched for all the submodules in the vendors folder  find   -name   git    This gave me some 4-5 dependencies that had git on them  I removed all these  git folders and voila  it worked  I knows it s hack  and not a very geeky one anyways  O Gods of SO  please forgive me  Next time I promise to read up on gitlinks and obey O mighty Linus Tovalds

User · Answer

First go to the Directory    vendor plugins open flash chart 2 and DELETE      THEN       git rm --cached vendor plugins open flash chart 2   git add     git commit -m  Message    git push -u origin master    git status     OUTPUT       On branch master   Your branch is up-to-date with  origin master     nothing to commit  working directory clean

User · Answer

I removed the  git directories from those new directories  this can create submodule drama  Google it if interested   I then ran git rm -rf --cached  the new directories Then I re-added the directories with a git add   from above   Reference URL https   danielmiessler com blog git-modified-untracked  gs W0C7X6U

[git] How to track untracked content?

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