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gitgit-submodules

git submodule add fatal: Not a Git Repository

I am fairly new to Git and trying my best to find some documentation on this problem to no avail.

Here's my command:

$ git submodule add https://github.com/joliver/EventStore.git externalsource/JOliverEventStore/

fatal: Not a git repository: ../.git/modules/externalsource/JOliverEventStore Unable to checkout submodule 'externalsource/JOliverEventStore'

I am in my root of my repo and there is currently no directory for /externalsource/JO liverEventStore/. The error is talking about a directory that I have no knowledge of.

If I add the submodule to the root dir like this:

$ git submodule add https://github.com/joliver/EventStore.git JOliverEventStore

I have no problem and it creates the folder in the root directory.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Solution

  • It can depends on the version of Git you are using: this recent thread (February 2012) mentions a bug:

    Since recently a submodule with name <name> has its git directory in the .git/modules/<name> directory of the superproject while the work tree contains a gitfile pointing there.

    When the same submodule is added on a branch where it wasn't present so far (it is not found in the .gitmodules file), the name is not initialized from the path as it should.
    This leads to a wrong path entered in the gitfile when the .git/modules/<name> directory is found, as this happily uses the - now empty - name.
    It then always points only a single directory up, even if we have a path deeper in the directory hierarchy.

    But more generally, uses the <path> argument of git submodule:

    <path> is the relative location for the cloned submodule to exist in the superproject.

    • If <path> does not exist, then the submodule is created by cloning from the named URL.
    • If <path> does exist and is already a valid git repository, then this is added to the changeset without cloning.
      This second form is provided to ease creating a new submodule from scratch, and presumes the user will later push the submodule to the given URL.

    eoinoc mentions in the comments another cause, which is detailed in the question "git status returns fatal: Not a git repository but .git exists and HEAD has proper permissions".

    My repo's location had changed, and I needed to update git's configuration files.