Alright this is gonna be a bit confusing but please bear with me. Still getting used to git and Im struggling. So. The sequence of events were as follows (very hectic so ill summarise)
I have a project with backend and frontend. the frontend directory has a react app (frontend/financee-app/) which by default has a .git initialised in it.
But my dumb self forgot to delete that inner repo before initialising a git repo for the whole project and committing and pushing my code.
So naturally, i couldnt open that react app folder on github cuz from what i learned till now is that its now a "submodule"? Which means theres a git repo within a git repo.
But after so many struggles and messing up my files, i replace my files with the backup files i had for this exact reason which have pretty much the same file structure as what i originally committed. BUT i made sure there is no inner git repo in the react app this time.
So i git pull my code to see what the differences are, it tells me theres three conflits. Two in two files. Which i fix, no problem. The third conflict is the freaking react app directory. Idk how to fix it so i just fix the other two, make sure i dont have a git repo in that app directory, and then i finally git add *.
Annnd. An error.
error: 'frontend/financee-app' does not have a commit checked out
fatal: updating files failed
Searching everywhere about that error, everyone keeps saying to delete the inner git repo. BUT I ALREADY DID. Is it detecting the one that i mistakenly pushed the first time that caused all these issues? What if i want to get rid of it for good. I just want to commit this new folder that doesnt have the git repo inside. I swear thats all i wanna do. Why is this so hard.
So naturally, i couldnt open that react app folder on github cuz from what i learned till now is that its now a "submodule"?
That's correct.
Which means theres a git repo within a git repo.
That's ... not quite right. Git can't hold a repository inside a repository—or maybe won't is a better word here, as the reason is only partly technical—so a submodule is not a repository inside a repository, but rather a reference to some repository, inside a repository. That is, if we designate the outer Git repository as R (repo), and the inner one as S (submodule), what R contains is not S itself, but rather some directions or instructions: "Go find S and clone it. Then, check out commit C inside S."
The directions/instructions are just a text file. They're stored in a file named .gitmodules; when you clone R and use git submodule init, Git reads the file and tries to clone S per the instructions. If the instructions in .gitmodules are correct, that produces S. R does not contain S at all: R has just the instructions.
Having followed the instructions, the setup for, and commits within, repository R now have information recording the submodule-ness of S, and this is where things go wrong.
To stop R from thinking that S is a submodule, you must teach Git that it's not. There is a very large (and old, August 2009) StackOverflow question and answer all about this: How do I remove a submodule? The process used to be bad, but has been improved since 2009. See VonC's accepted answer.
error: 'frontend/financee-app' does not have a commit checked out fatal: updating files failed
This is the symptom you will see when R still thinks that S exists as a submodule.