CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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LND
LND

Reputation: 152

Should I not be getting "fatal: pathspec 'file.txt' did not match any files" in this scenario?

I have a tracked file, "file.txt". I decided to physically delete it using Windows file explorer. Then I do a "git add file.txt". Should this not trigger "fatal: pathspec 'file.txt' did not match any files" since the file no longer exists?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 521

Answers (2)

Edward Thomson
Edward Thomson

Reputation: 78833

No. If you have a file in the index, and do not have the file in the working directory, then git add will stage the deletion. (In other words, it behaves like git rm).

$ rm exists
$ git ls-files --stage exists
100644 e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391 0   exists
$ git add exists
$ git ls-files --stage exists
$ ls -Flas exists
ls: exists: No such file or directory

However, if the file does not exist in either the index or the working directory, then git will error:

$ ls -Flas nonexistent
ls: nonexistent: No such file or directory
$ git ls-files --stage nonexistent
$ git add nonexistent
fatal: pathspec 'nonexistent' did not match any files

Upvotes: 2

Caleb
Caleb

Reputation: 125037

Should this not trigger "fatal: pathspec 'file.txt' did not match any files" since the file no longer exists?

No, it should not. file.txt is still a file that git is tracking, even if it doesn't exist in the local file system. It did exist, and then you deleted it. If you had run git status at that point, you'd see file.txt marked as deleted but not staged. When you run git add file.txt, and then git status, you'll see that file.txt is marked as deleted and staged. The next git commit will then add that change to the repository, so that the file won't show up in the repo beyond that commit.

Upvotes: 1

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