Git is not detecting a file and is not in .gitignore

Question

I have a file called "style.css" and git is not detecting it. It doesn't detect it if I delete it either, but it does detect if I change the name of the file. But I need it with that name. The file is not in the .gitignore file. This is driving me crazy!

I would appreciate some help.

Answer 1

Use git check-ignore command to debug your gitignore file (exclude files).

In example:

$ git check-ignore -v config.php .gitignore:2:src    config.php 

The above output details about the matching pattern (if any) for each given pathname (including line).

So maybe your file extension is not ignored, but the whole directory.

The returned format is:

<source> <COLON> <linenum> <COLON> <pattern> <HT> <pathname> 

Or use the following command to print your .gitignore in user and repo folder:

cat ~/.gitignore $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.gitignore $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.git/info/exclude 

Alternatively use git add -f <path/file> which allows adding otherwise ignored files.

See: man gitignore, man git-check-ignore for more details.

Answer 2

Another note, probably a rare case but I had this problem. I moved some files that were already tied to a repo from one directory to another, copy/paste style.

Along with it came the .git folder, which prevented git from detecting the folder.

So my folder structure was this, with git not detecting Folder 2 even though the repo was set for Original Project 1:

--Original Project 1     --.git     --Folder 1     --Folder 2          --.git          --Many other files/folders 

Deleting the child .git folder solved my problem.