Git ignore .git folder

Question

I have a php project that uses composer for package management. One of the packages is another project belonging to the same repo. I have a need to commit my entire vendor folder, but I want to ignore the .git folder in the sub-project so that it doesn't get treated like a submodule.

So far I have had no success. Things I've already tried:

vendor/.git

vendor/**/.git/

google search

stack overflow search

---

Here's what the sub-project folder looks like in GitLab. Instead of the files, it's just some kind of reference.

Answer 1

To not treat sub folder as a submodule, delete the .git folder. So that you won't see a folder with @number in the website. If you want to update the submodule. You can create a script like the following written in Shell

update.sh

git clone <url> <subfolder that you won't treat it as a module>
rm -rf <subfolder>/.git/
git add <subfolder>
git commit -m "Updated module"

update.bat

git clone <url> <subfolder>
rmdir /s /q <subfolder>\.git
git add <subfolder>
git commit -m "Updated module"

I believe this is the best way to avoid @number in GitLab

You can refer my GitHub repository created for answering this question.

Answer 2

It looks like git automatically ignores .git folders in subfolders of root repository.

(master)[/tmp]  
$ mkdir test_root
(master)[/tmp]  
$ git init test_root
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/test_root/.git/
(master)[/tmp]  
$ cd test
test/      test_root/ 
(master)[/tmp]  
$ cd test_root/
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ ls
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git init test_child
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/test_root/test_child/.git/
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ touch test_root_file
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ cd test_child/
(master)[/tmp/test_root/test_child]  (master) 
$ ls
(master)[/tmp/test_root/test_child]  (master) 
$ touch test_child_file
(master)[/tmp/test_root/test_child]  (master) 
$ cd ..
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    test_child/
    test_root_file

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git add test_child/test_child_file 
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)

    new file:   test_child/test_child_file

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    test_root_file

(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ cd test_child/
(master)[/tmp/test_root/test_child]  (master) 
$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    test_child_file

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
(master)[/tmp/test_root/test_child]  (master) 
$ git --version
git version 1.9.1
$ git add test_root_file 
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)

    new file:   test_child/test_child_file
    new file:   test_root_file

(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git commit -m'1 commit'
[master (root-commit) 4d4b695] 1 commit
 2 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 test_child/test_child_file
 create mode 100644 test_root_file
(master)[/tmp/test_root]  (master) 
$ git show
commit 4d4b69589bf4f471c3c784f95f447d2a40ee6d7d
Author: Evgenii Shchemelev
Date:   Wed Jan 6 09:20:03 2016 +0200

    1 commit

diff --git a/test_child/test_child_file b/test_child/test_child_file
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/test_root_file b/test_root_file
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29

Answer 3

For me this looks like a design error:

If you load a second project from the same repository as dependency, this project should be moved to a different repository.

And inside the vendor Directory place another .gitignore file with

# Ignore Git here
.git

# But not these files...
!.gitignore

Answer 4

You can use git hooks to achieve what you want. Thinking out of the box, you could use pre-commit hook to rename the .git directory of your included project, eg. to ".git2", add all files in the latter project except the ".git2" directory, commit all, push it and finally use post-commit hook to rename ".git2" folder back to ".git" in your module.

1) Create pre-commit file under .git/hooks/ of your root repo with contents:

#!/bin/sh
mv "vendor/modulename/.git" "vendor/modulename/.git2"

git rm --cached vendor/modulename
git add vendor/modulename/*
git reset vendor/modulename/.git2

2) Create post-commit file under .git/hooks/ also with contents:

#!/bin/sh
mv "vendor/modulename/.git2" "vendor/modulename/.git"

3) Change a file in your repo and finally:

git commit -a -m "Commit msg"
git push

Answer 5

The entire vendor folder should be ignored, not just the .git sub-directories. Which packages are used are stored in composer.json and composer.lock which are what you check into version control.

See: https://getcomposer.org/doc/faqs/should-i-commit-the-dependencies-in-my-vendor-directory.md

If you want to create a reusable package as part of your project, you have two options:

A) Use Composer to handle another repo

Add to composer.json...

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "url": "https://github.com/l3pp4rd/DoctrineExtensions.git",
            "type": "git"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "gedmo/doctrine-extensions": "~2.3"
    }
}

B) Use a 2nd packages directory

You can create a packages directory and add it to your autoload paths. This will let you use a single Git repo for all the code (if you want to use two repos, you can use a Git submodule)

Add to composer.json...

"autoload": {
    "classmap": ["packages"]
}

Answer 6

Documentation is your friend

Git Documentation said that:

A leading ** followed by a slash means match in all directories. For example, **/foo matches file or directory foo anywhere, the same as pattern foo. **/foo/bar matches file or directory bar anywhere that is directly under directory "foo".

So you may try the following code to ignore .git folder in subdirectories:

**/.git/

I also wonder why are you going to ignore the folder instead of deleting it.