What happens when you run `git add .git` in a Git repository?

Question

While it seemed to do nothing, it gave no warning or error message. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Comment from Git source:

/*  * Read a directory tree. We currently ignore anything but  * directories, regular files and symlinks. That's because git  * doesn't handle them at all yet. Maybe that will change some  * day.  *  * Also, we ignore the name ".git" (even if it is not a directory).  * That likely will not change.  */ 

Experiment to see what happend if I create a file .git and try to add it: (on Windows I cannot create a file .git when there is already a .git folder. I also could have created a .git elsewhere in a sub directory, but wanted to try out --git-dir and --work-tree which I haven't used before. After all I am experimenting. This also allows me to show that I can add the git metadata folder as seen below)

git --git-dir="c:/test" init touch blah git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." add . git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." status ( shows blah added) touch .git git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." add .git ( no output as usual) git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." status ( only blah shown) 

So yeah, .git - be it directory or file, is ignored by git.

And if I do something like below:

git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="c:/test" add c:/test 

all the meta files get added.

So again, it is only .git that is ignored not the git metadata folder (that you set via --git-dir) as far as I can see.