How to git add a whole folder

Question

I'm new to git and I am trying to git add my whole working directory but I receive the error message:

fatal: pathspec 'folder' did not match any files.

I'm in the working dir when I do this command, what am I doing wrong? Also, is it good practice to commit the whole folder instead of file by file? Thank you

Answer 1

My guess is that you are trying to add folder while you already are in folder.

$ cd my_folder
$ git init
$ git add my_folder # this is not going to work

Instead, add everything in the folder, rather than the folder itself:

$ cd my_folder
$ git init
$ git add .

---

To your other question, adding whole folders is fine, but only relevant when adding sub-folders. Again, you can't git add the folder that is your repository (my_folder above).

$ cd my_folder
$ ls
my_subfolder  other_things
$ git add my_subfolder # this is fine

The usual way to add everything in your working tree to your repo is git add ..

Answer 2

You need to first check if you have added that folder in .gitignore file.

If not, then just do this.

git add --all 

or

git add .