CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitbranchgitignore
Peter Kim
Peter Kim

Reputation: 203

Git saying there are changes to my .gitignore but "git status" shows "nothing to commit"

Currently working on a branch off master, and added something to .gitignore. I committed all my changes and tried checking out another branch but I get:

error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout:
  .gitignore
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

When i run git status, I get:

On branch feature/blahblah
nothing to commit, working directory clean

Does this mean git is not tracking my .gitignore file? If so, how do I get it to recognize the file?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 726

Answers (2)

Peter Kim
Peter Kim

Reputation: 203

So, if this happens to anyone, somehow, someway, run:

git rm --cached .gitignore

Upvotes: 1

rmunn
rmunn

Reputation: 36678

Did you, by chance, add a .gitignore line to your .gitignore file, so that it's ignoring itself? If so, remove it; it's best not to ignore the .gitignore file. Other places besides .gitignore that might be responsible are your global core.excludesfile setting, or a .git/info/excludes file in your repository (which would not get checked in). Neither of these are good practice in general, but some specific cases might require them (e.g., one developer uses a different editor than the other people on the project so he needs a different set of ignored files), so the options are available. See https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files/ for more details.

That seems most likely to be your problem.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions