Question

Why is git telling me that the path for my submodule is ignored?

The following path is ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
multi/vim/.vim/bundle/powerline
Use -f if you really want to add it.

---

Here’s what I’m doing:

$ git subaddvim git://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline.git powerline
The following path is ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
multi/vim/.vim/bundle/powerline
Use -f if you really want to add it.
$ git help subaddvim
`git subaddvim' is aliased to `!f(){ [ $# -eq 2 ] && git submodule add $1 multi/vim/.vim/bundle/$2; };f'

Edit: Looks like it’s the p in powerline:

$ git subaddvim git://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline.git p
The following path is ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
multi/vim/.vim/bundle/p
Use -f if you really want to add it.
$ git subaddvim git://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline.git owerline
Cloning into 'multi/vim/.vim/bundle/owerline'...

I don’t understand why.

Edit 2: I found a file in the submodule clone destination:

multi/vim/.vim/bundle$ cat powerline/.git
gitdir: ../.git/modules/multi/vim/.vim/bundle/powerline

If I remove that and try again, I get a different error:

$ git subaddvim git://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline.git powerline
fatal: Not a git repository: ../.git/modules/multi/vim/.vim/bundle/powerline
Unable to checkout submodule 'multi/vim/.vim/bundle/powerline'

Maybe there’s some thing messed up with my .git? (I had cloned this repo yesterday and then reverted that change.)

Edit 3: I tried using git submodule directly (instead of my alias) and it worked! I can re-create the issue (sometimes) by doing git reset --hard after the clone. Seems like it’s a combination of my alias not working the same as the git command git ignoring the .git file (or doing something magic that I don’t understand). And maybe something to do with my .git/config having a reference to powerline.

Edit 4: My previous edit wasn’t clear: Although using git submodule directly worked. It does not always work. I don’t know why it worked in the first place.

I’ve narrowed it down to a reproducible case. It looks like the issue is caused by git assuming that submodules are in the root directory. Here’s my test script.

if [ ! -d remote ] ; then
    echo
    echo Setup remote test repo 
    mkdir remote
    cd remote
    git init
    touch firstfile
    git add firstfile
    git ci -m'first'
    cd -
fi

# Pick one of these lines:
submodule=multi/plugin
# OR
submodule=plugin

echo
echo Setup test repo 
mkdir test
cd test
git init
touch firstfile
git add firstfile
git ci -m'first'

echo
echo submodule add
git submodule add ../remote $submodule
ls -ld $submodule/.git
cat $submodule/.git

echo
echo submodule remove
git reset --hard HEAD
ls -ld $submodule/.git
cat $submodule/.git
rm -r $submodule/

echo
echo submodule re-add
git submodule add ../remote $submodule
ls -ld $submodule/.git
cat $submodule/.git

Using submodule=multi/plugin will fail:

submodule re-add
fatal: Not a git repository: ../.git/modules/multi/plugin
Unable to checkout submodule 'multi/plugin'
-rw-r--r-- 1 pydave mkgroup 37 Aug  1 10:08 multi/plugin/.git
gitdir: ../.git/modules/multi/plugin

(After this, if you run git submodule add, you’ll get the “following path is ignored” message.)

But submodule=plugin will succeed:

submodule re-add
-rw-r--r-- 1 pydave mkgroup 31 Aug  1 10:07 plugin/.git
gitdir: ../.git/modules/plugin

The relative paths are both using ../.git, which is only correct for the second option — when the submodule is in the root of the git project.

I’ve rename this question to be more specific to my problem and re-asked the original question.

Answer 1

I think the answer is that there’s a bug in git when using submodules that are not in the top-level directory.

The solution is to delete the git repo for the submodule stored in .git/modules:

$ rm -fr multi/plugin/ .git/modules/multi/plugin/
$ git submodule add ../remote multi/plugin
Cloning into 'multi/plugin'...
done.