git commit stopped working - Error building trees

Question

I can not commit a change:

$ git commit
error: invalid object 100644 13da9eeff5a9150cf2135aaed4d2e337f97b8114 for 'spec/routing/splits_routing_spec.rb'
error: Error building trees

I tried so far:

$ git fsck | grep 13da
missing blob 13da9eeff5a9150cf2135aaed4d2e337f97b8114

and also:

$ git prune
error: Could not read 1394dce6fd1ad15a70b2f2623509082007dc5b6c
fatal: bad tree object 1394dce6fd1ad15a70b2f2623509082007dc5b6c

and also:

$ git fsck | grep 13da
missing blob 13da9eeff5a9150cf2135aaed4d2e337f97b8114

but nothing helped. Should I delete the file, commit and reintroduce back? I am willing to lose little bit of history if it brings git commit back.

Answer 1

This error means that you have a file with hash 13da9eeff5a9150cf2135aaed4d2e337f97b8114, and this hash is not present in .git/objects/../, or it's empty. When this error occurred, I only had this hash in the error, without the file path. Then I tried to do git gc --auto and git reset --hard. After one of these commands (these commands did not fix my problem), I got the path of the file that triggers the error.

You just need to generate the object hash:

git hash-object -w spec/routing/splits_routing_spec.rb

For more information see documentation. In the documentation, there is an additional way of repairing this error.

P.S. This was the only way that was helpful for me.

Answer 2

You might have a corrupted object in your git repository.

If you have a remote, or other clones of this repository, you could grab from there the problematic file and just replace it on your local repo.

The file you want would be in:

/repo/.git/objects/13/da9eeff5a9150cf2135aaed4d2e337f97b8114

Answer 3

git reset --hard should bring your repository back to normal, but you will lose uncommitted changes.

Answer 4

If the problematic file is being added by your change you can just remove it from the index and add it again:

git reset <file> 
git add <file>