Reputation: 1010

How to fix "modified content, untracked content" in git?

The objective is to commit a git branch. The output of "git status" for the branch is:

On branch zeromq_new
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/zeromq'.

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
  (commit or discard the untracked or modified content in submodules)

      modified:   log4cplus (modified content, untracked content)
      modified:   ../lib/notification/cppzmq (modified content)

The directory structure looks like this:

HySecureGateway
├──fes
│   └──log4cplus
│       ├──.git
│       ├──.gitattributes
│       ├──.gitignore
│       ├──.gitmodules
│       ├──catch
│       │   ├──.git
│       │   ├──.gitattributes
│       │   ├──.github
│       │   ├──.gitignore
│       │   └──.github
│       │       ├──issue_template.md
│       │       └──pull_request_template.md
│       └──threadpool
│           └──.github
└──lib
    └──notification
        └──cppzmq
            ├──.git
            └──.gitignore

I read an answer of to a similar question here:

How to track untracked content? ,

and couldn't understand it completely. Also the logc4plus/.gitmodules contains this:

[submodule "threadpool"]

        path = threadpool
        url = https://github.com/log4cplus/ThreadPool.git

[submodule "catch"]

        path = catch
        url = https://github.com/philsquared/Catch.git

Upvotes: 75

Answers (12)

Talib Hussain

Reputation: 1344

Remove .git from folders which are not being added into git stage. This is the simplest way

If you can't find it or hidden do the following. In Finder, open your Macintosh HD folder. Press Command + Shift + . (period) to make the hidden files appear.

-->> not working for me

git rm -rf --cached

Upvotes: 0

VasiliNovikov

Reputation: 10256

Go to your submodule: cd your_submodule
Clean it: git clean -fdx .

That's it. No need to manually remove any sensitive files or re-download anything.

Upvotes: 0

Lavanya

Reputation: 21

I faced the same issue, I had a folder structure like this,

/project
  ---> /client
  ---> /server

The client folder was untracked because it was a git repository in itself. I followed the following steps to resolve the problem

1) remove .git file from client folder
2) run the command "git rm -rf --cached client"
3) git add client
4) git push -u origin main

Upvotes: 2

Muhammad Shehryar

Reputation: 1

i solved the problem by moving in sub folder which what not tracking and run

these command: git add . git commit -m "my commit"

then back to main folder and run again these command

Upvotes: 0

Quan Truong

Reputation: 327

Solution involves removing .git/ from the directories with the "modified content, untracked content" label, removing the --cached filed from those directories, and then running git add on those directories once again.

Step-by-step solution:

Remove .git/ from log4cplus and ../lib/notification/cppzmq.
From parent directory from where you initialized your git repository, run the command:
```
git rm -rf --cached log4cplus/ && git rm -rf --cached ../lib/notifications/cppzmq
```
Add and commit the directories to your branch again.
Push to your branch.

Upvotes: 10

Taiger

Reputation: 149

For some reason these separate repos have altered files. There are a couple ways to deal with it, depending what they actually are.

You can navigate into each repo and see what files are changed. Then you can commit, make a new branch, or get rid of the changes.

If these repos are seperate projects that you want to track but not mess with, you can make your parent repo simply ignore changes in these submodules with:

git update-index --assume-unchanged $DIRECTORY

(where $DIRECTORY is the submodule you want to ignore changes to).

Upvotes: 7

Bishwa Timilsina

Reputation: 1243

Remove .git from subfolders. This works for me.

Upvotes: 83

vivek87799

Reputation: 11

log4cplus is your submodule that has modified and untracked contents.

modified content: Go to your submodule "log4cplus" commit your modified changes
untracked contents: Says that you have added new files or new folders in your submodule that you have not yet started to track i.e., git add <newfile/newfolder>. In case you want to ignore the untracked files add them to the .gitignore.

Now you should be able to update the commits from the submodule onto your main or outer repository. Please note that deleting the .git file in your submodule is not a solution.

Upvotes: 1

Kele Huang

Reputation: 59

I also encountered such a problem, and it indeed bothered me a lot. I solved it by running git submodule update.

Upvotes: 3

Meghesh Shenoy

Reputation: 149

What happening here is that you are in your root Folder Folder and You want to push all your children to git repository.So a git file is created.And if you get a untraceable or untracked file error the reason is some on your childen directories also have a git repository with it.You can delete the git repository from the untracked or untraceable folder by command ---->rmdir -Force -Recurse .git This command will delete the local git repo in your untracebale or untracked directory and once again go to your root folder and type the same command. Reinitialize the git repo and its Done!!!

Upvotes: 2