CODEWITHSUNDEEP
git
Sibbs Gambling
Sibbs Gambling

Reputation: 20385

git adds file from outside repo folder?

I am creating a repo for my dotfiles that distribute all over on my machine. I picked the directory with most of the dotfiles and created the git repo there. Now I need to add the dotfiles that are NOT in this git repo directory.

I thought I found a way and did

git --work-tree=/ add  /another/path/.vimrc

The file is successfully added and pushed as the first commit. However, later I changed the file. When I did git commit -m 'edit .vimrc', I got

On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
...
no changes added to commit

Why is this the case? Did I add the outside file wrongly?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 483

Answers (1)

torek
torek

Reputation: 489858

The --work-tree=/ option changes the work-tree temporarily, for the duration of the single command, git ... add /another/path/.vimrc.

What gets added to your repository is the remainder of the name. So your repository now has a file named another/path/.vimrc.

If you had run:

git --work-tree=/another/path add .vimrc

you would have added a file named .vimrc to your repository.

Later, another Git command such as:

git checkout <revision> -- another/path/.vimrc

or:

git checkout <revision> -- .vimrc

extracts the file (another/path/.vimrc or .vimrc) to the current work tree, from the specified revision. That current work tree is whatever you have specified this time with --work-tree=, or by default, the implied work-tree based on git rev-parse --show-toplevel.

Upvotes: 1

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