Accidentally created a git submodule

Question

So I was developing a API Client gem, which was working great, had it's own github repository and my team lead decided that he wanted me to move this client api into the api repository itself. So I copied the files over into it's own directory, removed the .git directory from the client's directory, and merged it into master. Worked great.

However, now when I try to create a branch off of master, the directory shows up a submodule on github, and isn't tracked in my local git. There is no .gitmodules folder, and no mention of submodules whatsoever. I can't create a new branch because it says that there are untracked files that will get overwritten (all the files in my client gem directory) but as far as I can tell there's no way for me to start tracking these files. I can access the directory just fine, but as soon as I modify a file, the change doesn't show up in the api projects git.

What do I do?

Answer 1

Running git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch client then allowed me to git add client/

Answer 2

If there is no .git folder or file in that subfolder, all you need to do is git rm --cached [folder] followed by git add [folder]/*