Git add all subdirectories

Question

I'm having trouble adding a folder and all of it's subdirectories to my git repository. I realized this is a very popular question after doing some googling and I've tried each suggestion with no luck, specifically the suggestion from the man page on git-add. I even tried git add -A with no success. For simplicity sake, say I initialized my git repository as Dir1. Then I have the following directory structure of files.

Dir1/file1-1.txt
Dir1/file1-2.txt
Dir1/Dir2/file2-1.txt
Dir1/Dir2/Dir3/file3-1.txt

My real files have subdirectories that span 5-6 levels deep, so is there a git command to add all the files in each subdirectory to my repository? Right now, when I do the suggestion from the man page git add Dir1/\* I can see Dir2 in my repo, but it shows up as a green folder and I can't open it, which leads me to believe that all the files/folders in Dir2 did not get added. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm a new git user (less than a week of using it), so try and keep your instructions at a beginner's level.

Wivestad

git add of any directory is automatically recursive. Using git add . in the repo's top level should add everything in there. If it doesn't, .gitignore is in play (local or global). – Emotionalism

did you check .gitignore? Somehow maybe your directories are ignored. – Lode

what is the output of git status --ignored? – Sappy

Just to help others who see this question, if the directories you make don't have any files in them, they are not added by git add . You have to add some file in the directories for git to track them. – Apospory

Answer 1

Do,

git add .

while in the root of the repository. It will add everything. If you do git add *, it will only add the files * points to. The single dot refers to the directory.

If your directory or file wasn't added to git index/repo after the above command, remember to check if it's marked as ignored by git in .gitignore file.

Allowable

Just tried this. Still not working. I did git add . git commit git push origin master Am I missing something? – Wivestad

Assuming your files are under Dir1, you should do cd Dir1; git init; git add . ; git commit; Nothing else is required. If you have .gitignore ignoring files in some directory and still want to add them, you need to do git add -f . instead of git add .. – Allowable

I tried "git add ." but it wasn't working. The next day, I went back in and tried and everything "just worked" so thanks! It must have been one of those midnight bugs that go away when the light comes back on. – Wivestad

git add . does not work and it does not recursively add the sub directories and its content. – Morehouse

You may need to open a fresh command window for this to work consistently. – Lollop

tried this on Jenkins and I received fatal: Paths with -a does not make sense. – Hydria

"git add -f ." worked like a charm here. Thanks @KallePokki – Antofagasta

Answer 2

Simple solution:

git rm --cached directory
git add directory

Isolecithal

Answer 3

You can also face problems if a subdirectory itself is a git repository - ie .has a .git directory - check with ls -a.

To remove go to the subdirectory and rm .git -rf.

Jaymie

weird issues arise when subdirs contain .git yes :) for dir in find . -name ".git"; do rm -rf $dir; done – Omnipresent

Answer 4

Also struggled, but got it right typing

git add -f ./JS/*

where JS was my folder name which contain sub folders and files

Hecatomb

it can add ignored files and do a mess in repository. – Chauffer

git add ./JS is the correct usage. It will add all the files in the directory and all subdirectories still caring about ignored files. – Jotun

Answer 5

I can't say for sure if this is the case, but what appeared to be a problem for me was having .gitignore files in some of the subdirectories. Again, I can't guarantee this, but everything worked after these were deleted.

Curbstone

Answer 6

1. git add one file that's at the deepest layer of your file structure (the latest level of a Folder you want to add).
   For example:
   git add Folder/Subfolder-L1/Subfolder-L2/Subfolder-L3/...file123.md
2. Then, git add --all :/.
   It will add all the Folders, Subfolders and files to the existing repo.
3. git commit -m 'your commit.
4. git push -u origin main, push to the remote origin. Voila!

References: Recursively add the entire folder to a repository

Dulles

Answer 7

Most likely .gitignore files are at play. Note that .gitignore files can appear not only at the root level of the repo, but also at any sub level. You might try this from the root level to find them:

find . -name ".gitignore"

and then examine the results to see which might be preventing your subdirs from being added.

There also might be submodules involved. Check the offending directories for ".gitmodules" files.

Disposure

Answer 8

I saw this problem before, when the (sub)folder I was trying to add had its name begin with "_Something_"

I removed the underscores and it worked. Check to see if your folder has characters which may be causing problems.

Oneself

Answer 9

If for someone git add . is not working (as in my case as well), use git add ./* which included all files in all subdirectories. My directory structure is:

MainDirectory
|_.git
|_README
|_folder1
|   |_file1
|   |_file2
|   |_subfolder1
|   |    |_file3
|   |    |_file4
|   |_subfolder2
|        |_file5
|        |_file6
|_folder2 
|   |_file1
|   |_file2
|   |_subfolder1
|   |    |_file3
|   |    |_file4
|   |_subfolder2
|        |_file5
|        |_file6
|_otherfiles

doing git add ./* included everything inside one level depth or more while git add . was adding only files at current level.

Langouste