Git file is beyond a symbolic link

Question

I've ran into an issue wherein Git believes that a file is beyond a symbolic link, and that, thus, it cannot be version controlled, but it appears to be a real file.

[root@r1 h]# stat -f conf/core-site.xml 
  File: "conf/core-site.xml"
    ID: 5c7eb82882a6e866 Namelen: 255     Type: ext2/ext3
Block size: 4096       Fundamental block size: 4096
Blocks: Total: 2735511    Free: 510158     Available: 371202
Inodes: Total: 694960     Free: 597972

Additionally, I've tried "readlink" to show the link pointer, but to no avail.

How does Git determine if a file is a symbolic link or not?

Ungrudging

btw this is running in a virtualized environment, not sure that this will make a difference, but i figured id add it as a detail. – Ungrudging

what is the error message? what is the output of git status? – Goldenrod

stat -f shows information for the file system, not a particular file. So that output isn't really relevant. – Wesson

Well, my question was indirectly answered below - it turns out that files behind a symlink directory are, themselves, not displayed as symlinks by "stat -f" – Ungrudging

PSA: namei -l conf/core-site.xml (from util-linux package) is an oddly named yet very handy command for such investigations: it lists type, permissions, name (similar to ls -l) for each dir/symlink/file in the chain the OS needs to resolve a given path. – Iseult

Answer 1

/project/subproject/conf

If you need to add the /conf into the main project and add symlinks for subprojects,

1. Remove conf from subproject and add to the project, and commit changes.

$ cp /project/subproject/conf /project
$ rm /project/subproject/conf
$ commit changes    

2. Then add the symlink and commit

$ cd /project/subproject/
$ ln -s ../conf/ conf
$ commit changes

Proctology

Answer 2

Git shows that message for a file /this/is/my/file in case any of the dirs in the path or the file itself are symlinks. In your case the file is real, but maybe "conf" dir is a symlink.

Solution: find the right path for the file and run git add on the real file

Caramelize

Git must be support the symbolic links, many files maybe far from the repo, but the repo needs their current content, this is an awkward attitude after all those years – Chlorine

Answer 3

I meet the problem when I want to modify a file in node_modules of js project. Lastly I place an effective file in my js folder and reference it. I remove the original module dependency.

Nunatak

Answer 4

If you are using a GUI for Git, please do git add . in command line before committing it in the GitHub GUI or SourceTree.

Codpiece

Did you reproduce the behavior? It seems to me that you don't answer the question ("How does Git determine if a file is a symbolic link or not?") and your suggestion also likely doesn't solve the problem. – Juline

Currently the only solution that worked for me --> +1. – Whilst