How to "resolve fatal: Not a git repository"?

S

8

67

I was trying to remove one sub-module from the project

Tried rm -rf .git/modules/submodulePath

After that I am having the issue

fatal: Not a git repository

Shushubert answered 18/1, 2017 at 11:57 Comment(1)

list your folder structure if possible? – Blondellblondelle 18/1, 2017 at 12:9

B

66

These two files contains absolute submodule path:

{submodule}/.git
.git/modules/{submodule}/config

So, if you moved the repo, the absolute path in these two files are not valid, and cause the 'not a git repository' error. Just fix these files manually.

Update:

Delete the relevant section from the .gitmodules file. You can use below command:
```
git config -f .gitmodules --remove-section "submodule.submodule_name"
```
Stage the .gitmodules changes
```
git add .gitmodules
```
Delete the relevant section from .git/config. You can use below command:
```
git submodule deinit -f "submodule_name"
```
Remove the gitlink (no trailing slash):
```
git rm --cached path_to_submodule
```
Cleanup the .git/modules:
```
rm -rf .git/modules/path_to_submodule
```

Commit:

git commit -m "Removed submodule <name>"

Delete the now untracked submodule files
```
rm -rf path_to_submodule
```

Blondellblondelle answered 18/1, 2017 at 12:7 Comment(6)

I am not able to find any folder related to the sub-module i removed. – Shushubert 18/1, 2017 at 12:17

@Shushubert updated the normal way to do the removal of submodule in git. Go through it and let me know if you have any problem – Blondellblondelle 18/1, 2017 at 12:27

In my case i need to do a git reset after editing the .git/config file – Delrio 4/4, 2019 at 12:37

Both of those files contain only relative paths for me. git version 2.27.0. – Secretariat 4/9, 2020 at 18:47

I actually only had to do the submodule deinit here, thanks for the info! – Prank 20/9, 2020 at 19:5

For some reason only a few of the submodules in my project contained absolute paths, the rest of them contained relative paths. I changed the absolute path entries to relative paths and everything worked. – Fitz 19/10, 2021 at 0:25

E

19

I ran into this and didn't have a .git/modules directory in my main repository. I have one submodule 'build', so just removed any references and reinitialized it:

rm -rf .git/modules
rm -rf build
git submodule init
git submodule update

Erk answered 27/8, 2018 at 0:28 Comment(4)

Exactly what I needed, short and sweet. – Atheism 7/6, 2019 at 8:20

This was a saver for me! – Held 15/4, 2022 at 8:15

The Windows equivalent for these should be rd /s /q <dir> for cmd or rd -r <dir> in powershell. https://mcmap.net/q/56117/-quot-rm-rf-quot-equivalent-for-windows – Gourd 31/10, 2023 at 23:28

Actually, Remove-Item <dir> -Recurse -Force may be better for powershell #25798772 – Gourd 31/10, 2023 at 23:43

M

12

I've just hit this problem.

In my case, this was due to checkout branches with different submodules.

One branch has some submodules, but
the other has 2 more submodules.

For some reason, they were impossible to initialize with:

git submodule update --recursive --init

I've needed to manually delete this files/diretories before update worked properly.

{submodule-path}/.git
.git/modules/{submodule}/config

Marthamarthe answered 1/4, 2020 at 22:16 Comment(2)

Deleting the <submodule-path>/.git file fixed this issue for me – Edging 17/3, 2021 at 23:52

For me alone with rm -rf submodule-path. Thanks ~ – Himyaritic 22/6, 2022 at 7:19

A

10

I ran into this error after I moved a git repository to a different folder. When I looked in:

{submodule}/.git

I saw a single line with an absolute path, e.g.:

gitdir: /Users/ajx/Documents/repo/.git/modules/{submodule}

I changed this to a relative path, e.g.:

gitdir: ../../.git/modules/{submodule}

I'm not sure why git would hardcode absolute paths...

Aerodontia answered 13/12, 2017 at 14:14 Comment(0)

C

2

You simply can update the .git file

nano {my submodule}/.git

with the right gitdir.

Because i think you change the path of your folder

Chincapin answered 15/5, 2017 at 15:53 Comment(0)

A

1

In my case, When I try to git commit -m "***",this problrm occurs: fatal: not a git repository: library-sp18/../.git/modules/library-sp18

My solution: delete the .git file in library-sp18 and git init

Amperage answered 27/6, 2022 at 2:3 Comment(0)

E

1

I also experienced this issue when changing from my develop branch to a feature branch that contains a new submodule.

After testing all the above solutions, I noticed that the cause was a git config option: submodule.recurse = true

It was trying to fetch the module at checkout but the submodule was not well initialized.

Estriol answered 4/5, 2023 at 9:50 Comment(0)

T

0

Remove the submodule section from the repository .git/config
Delete submodule directores:

rm -rf {submodule-path}
rm -rf .git/modules/*

These are all the areas that submodule information is kept

Turbojet answered 18/11, 2022 at 3:24 Comment(0)

Recommended topics

Hot tags