error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on working directory - macos

First, let me tell you that I have already checked all the similar threads and searched google to find what the problem may be, but no success. My problem is that I'm trying to use sparse checkout in git, but I get this error:
error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on working directory
I have this 60GB repository, which I need to clone. I need only a part of it, so to save a disk space I wanted to use sparse checkout. This is what I do:
mkdir repoDir
git init repoDir
cd repoDir
git remote add origin <repo url>
git config core.sparsecheckout true
echo "some/dir/" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
git pull --depth=1 origin master
Note I add the remote without -f flag, so nothing is fetched.
The result:
error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on working directory
I tried several things:
Instead of initialising new repo and adding the remote manually, I did git clone --no-checkout and then set up the sparse checkout. This didn't help as my git status showed as if I deleted all the files in my repo. The git pull origin master command results in the same error.
Tried all possible combination of paths in step 6, with preceding slashes, slashes after the path, stars, spaces between path and > or >>. Btw I'm confused what is the correct format here, from the comments on SO I see mutually exclusive ways of formatting this.
Tried to make sure my .git/info/sparse-checkout is ASCII, and has proper line endings as found here. This is probably only problematic on Windows, but I just checked this anyway.
My git version: git version 1.9.3 (Apple Git-50)
OSX Yosemite 10.10.2 (14C109)

It turns out that "some/dir/" was wrong, since I didn't have the repository I didn't know it's real structure. I was able to browse it through web interface but I just discovered the folders don't correspond exactly to the real repository folder structure.
Lesson for the future: make sure you know the folder structure before creating sparse-checkout file.

The sequence of operations I wanted to follow is similar, namely the one suggested in this other post https://stackoverflow.com/a/13738951/5459638. I get the error message
error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on working directory
when launching git pull <remote> <branch> with branch being master.
As #lawicko said, in the project webpage I can click my way to the subdirectory to be cloned and copy the URL of that page; ctrl+L ctrl+C makes doing this nice and quick. This URL has the form
https://gitlab.com/<username>/<project>/tree/master/<subdir>/<subdir>
The part that my sparse-checkout file accepts is the children of master
<subdir>/<subdir>/
with the trailing slash.
As an alternative to the same aim, there is another path in the form <project>/<subdir>/<subdir> to the right of the drop-down menu for switching branches at the top of the webpage.
In this case, I would have copied and pasted the children of <project> plus the trailing slash.
And this path is not as easy to copy and paste as the URL is.

Note that if you are using sparse-checkout on windows, you may need to add core.protectNTFS false per https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/2777

Related

Cannot git checkout master: invalid path '?'

After an "unsuccessful" git pull on my local master, an error prevents to switch back to master:
C: repo_folder> git checkout master
error: invalid path '?'
The ? must be because it is a keybase repo.
From another branch where I checked out some files of the last commit:
C: repo_folder> git diff origin/master --compact-summary
"\004" (gone) | 1902 ---------------------------
some irrelevant stuff | (num) -
The removed file "\004" (that was never present in my local) seems to come from some Mac OS (someone might have opened a csv and a temporary file was created when that user did the commit and pushed?).
observe that the file that is marked as (gone) is to be removed by git
the problem is that the filename has characters that are not compatible with the Windows file system and that the file never existed in my local Windows repo.
If I clone from a Linux platform, I can checkout to master with no problems. However, in Windows, there's no way back to the master branch.
Any ideas on how to solve this issue? (already tried some posts with no success)
I can't really understand how it comes git doesn't even allow me to checkout to master. Should I file a bug report?
Alternatively, perhaps I could create a new master branch and get rid of the current one.
EDIT
A clone from Linux helped to identify that the file ? was actually there.
This could be checked directly from Windows as well by using the command: git ls-tree origin/master (which was showing the original problematic name "\004")
The accepted answer includes the case where you want to save the content of the file, while in my case I only wanted to get rid of it. So in my case, I have just deleted the file from Linux, committed and pushed the change, and did a git fetch origin master:master to fetch my local master with being checked out in another branch (as I was not able to checkout to master). This finally did the trick and I could checkout to master.
Hope this clarifies to someone with a similar problem.
? (or maybe it's EOT) cannot be used as a filename on Windows. The file will have to be deleted or renamed. You can do this most easily by cloning on a system which does allow ? and making the fix.
If you only have Windows, Fixing Invalid Git Paths on Windows offers a method of renaming the file without checking it out. In brief...
git checkout origin/master -f to get the checkout without the problematic file.
Make a branch.
Add and commit the "deleted" problematic file.
Use git ls-tree HEAD^ to get the ID of the problem file.
Use git cat-file -p <ID> to get the content of the problem file.
Put the content into a new file.
Add and commit.

something went wrong when pushing to github with webstorm

As is shown in the image,I'm not sure if the failure is caused by some missing property while setting up webstorm .
The issue is not resolved after a lot of efforts.As a learner,I don't know what to do now.
Meanwhile,something seems wrong as shown in git bash.I've no idea whether the two are directly related.
If you have ever faced these difficulties,could you please give me some idea? Even if it's only a web address.
What I want to do is only pushing my code. Anyone who pushed successfully in any other way will be welcomed to share your method.
If I'm being honest I'm not sure that I completely understand your question, but I will supply some information that will hopefully lead you down the right track.
First in the bash shell, cd (change directory) into your project directory like this:
$ cd /c/foo/bar/yourprojectfolder
In your project top most directory, do you have a .git folder? You may have to show hidden folders in windows to see this directory. If not, you need to initialize a repository with the init command.
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in C:/foo/bar/yourprojectfolder/.git/
After running this command, you should see a .git folder inside of the directory you changed to (used cd to get to) earlier.
Next, in order to push, you first need a remote repository to push to. Based on your first picture, I believe that you have successfully created a repository on GitHub. If not however, just log into GitHub and click the 'New Repository' button:
Once a repo has been created, you need to add it as a remote to your local git (in git bash). To do this you need a url (either SSH or HTTPS) to your repo. You can find this url inside of your repository in online GitHub. If you are not certain you have set up SSH, it's best to use the HTTPS url. It should look something like this, but the url itself will be different and specific to your repository:
Copy that url to your clipboard, and then back in git bash run:
$ git remote add origin <PASTE YOUR URL HERE>
You need to make an initial commit of your code to have something to push:
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Initial commit"
Finally, with the origin repo set up and a commit made, you should be able to push to your origin repo
$ git push -u origin master
You should now be able to view your code on GitHub.

WHat does Cross sign indicates on a file in Git for windows

I am using Git client for windows.
I recently pulled a repository and did some modifications and deleted some files (Not shift delete).
When I undo-ed the delete I see the attached cross mark on the file/What does that mean?
If something is wrong , how can I revert back to the original situtaion.
Looks like you have deleted the file.
In order to revert (since i don't know which client you are using)
it open the git bash and follow this steps:
I assume you are using tortoise git:
# Open git bash in the desired folder
git status
# now you should see your desired file in the list marked as deleted
git checkout <file name>
Here is a screenshot for you

Git status shows file twice but different case

I tried to do a search for my issue and the closest thing that I could is this.
git Status Shows Same File Twice - But with different path slash styles
But it doesn't seem to be the same issue I have.
I was doing a commit and noticed that the same file was listed twice but with different case. For instance, Directory/resource.h and Directory/Resource.h. Now there is only one file in the directory resource.h. If I look at the file through Git Extensions they look exactly the same. There doesn't seem to be another hidden file, there is only one file.
So I tried to fix this by removing the resource.h file, committing, and then adding the file back and recommit again. Only one file showed up as added. I thought I fixed the issue, but now if I try to checkout a different branch I get the following error.
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
Directory/Resource.h
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting
Done
I don't really have any idea what to do from here, I've only been using Git for a few months and I haven't had to do anything more complicated than merging branches and pushing and pulling.
This can happen in Windows if you have a repo with ignorecase = false and rename a file without using git. To fix, this should work
git mv -f Resource.h resource.h
git commit -m 'fix case'
and this should prevent it from happening again.
git config core.ignorecase true

Git (windows 7) won't add directories, but adds files files typed explicitly

trying to find an answer to this, have seen it hinted at, but no solution.
Not entirely new to git, but haven't used it in a few months... this is my first time using it on windows. using git bash.
I have a cake PHP site that I want to add exluding any cache files my .gitignore file contains only:
app/tmp/*
Here is the most basic thing I have tried:
git init
git add .
git commit
I get a message on commit saying there are untracked files - all files and dirs at the root directory.
git status
gives me the same message.
However, if I type
git add .htaccess
it stages the .htaccess file.
Also, if I do:
git add app/.htaccess
It will add that file too.
I have also tried
git add app/*
no luck.
Thanks in advance.
The files aren't ignored, because otherwise you would be forced to do a git add --force afile.
However, you might want to check GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable, and see if they reference another repository, which could explain the discrepancy between the index and what you think is your working tree.

Resources