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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?

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4
  • 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.
    – jayunit100
    Commented Feb 9, 2013 at 1:11
  • 1
    what is the error message? what is the output of git status?
    – Benedikt Waldvogel
    Commented Feb 9, 2013 at 2:14
  • stat -f shows information for the file system, not a particular file. So that output isn't really relevant.
    – qqx
    Commented Feb 9, 2013 at 4:49
  • 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"
    – jayunit100
    Commented Feb 9, 2013 at 16:11

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
7

/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
  1. Then add the symlink and commit
$ cd /project/subproject/
$ ln -s ../conf/ conf
$ commit changes
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0

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

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1
  • 2
    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
    – Digerkam
    Commented Mar 6, 2023 at 1:04
0

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.

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-1

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

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1
  • 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.
    – MetaColon
    Commented Jul 8 at 11:17

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