# Git tries to delete when doing git add **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 8, 2008, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503 "2008-07-08T17:04:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/1 "2008-07-08T17:04:04Z")
Sorry, I know this is a git post, but I don’t really know where else to post this besides the official git mailing list, and I don’t want to post it there, because something this obvious surely can’t be a bug. Here’s the problem, and it happens with almost all of my rails apps. I’m developing my app, and I’ve got your standard plugins in vendor/plugins, either as submodules or just cloned it (it doesn’t matter, I get this behavior either way). So lets say I create a new model with script/generate scaffold Post. As you know, this generates about ten new files in about 8 different directories. So instead of doing git add for each one, I tried git add . However, when I do this, and then run git status, git wants to delete some of my plugins, if not all of them. Has anyone experienced/heard about this or a similar problem? It’s driving me crazy and there’s no way this is a bug in the git core. Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/2 "2008-07-08T17:43:25Z")
What version of git are you running? I’ve personally never run into anything like this. On Jul 8, 10:04 am, Alex S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/3 "2008-07-08T17:46:05Z")
I’m running version 1.5.5. ---
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 6:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/4 "2008-07-08T18:48:39Z")
I seemed to have fixed the problem git deleting the .git/ directory in the project and creating a new one. Maybe this problem was caused by adding plugins in initially by cloning them instead of using submodules. On that point, submodules is the way to handle plugins, correct? ---
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/5 "2008-07-08T17:48:42Z")
I can’t really help you right now, but if I can get some spare time tonight at home I’ll do some experimenting. On Jul 8, 10:46 am, Alex S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/6 "2008-07-09T00:12:12Z")
Actually, I have completely stopped using submodules due to issues when changing between Git branches. Some of my branches have different versions of plugins and submodules were constantly an issue. I also don’t like that the main Git repository doesn’t show changes to the submodules (since they are separate repos). Sometimes changes in the submodules impact the main app and I like to track that in one place. I have a simple solution that is working well for us. My work flow is like this: I keep a directory named git-plugins which contains all of my git repositories for my plugins. I make any modifications to a plugin directly in the git-plugins folder. When finished making changes, I delete the folder contents in the main app from vendor/plugins (not the entire folder) and copy the contents from the relevant git-plugins folder. (Make certain that you delete then copy. This removes any old files.) Here is an example: Take a plugin called ‘myplugin’. I store this in git-plugins/myplugin. I make changes directly to the git-plugins/myplugin folder. When I want to update my app, I delete the contents from vendor/plugins/ myplugin. I then copy git-plugins/myplugin/\* to vendor/plugins/ myplugin. I have turned this into a short script which automatically updates all of my plugins with one command. This isn’t as easy as using Piston was with SVN but it works very smoothly. It also ensures that your main Git log tracks changes to your app and all plugins. Best of luck! DrMark On Jul 8, 6:48 am, Alex S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@asoto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/asoto)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2008, 3:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/git-tries-to-delete-when-doing-git-add/142503/7 "2008-07-10T15:06:51Z")
On Jul 8, 5:27 pm, DrMark [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Actually, I have completely stopped using submodules due to issues > when changing between Git branches. Some of my branches have different > versions of plugins and submodules were constantly an issue. I also > don’t like that the main Git repository doesn’t show changes to the > submodules (since they are separate repos). Sometimes changes in the > submodules impact the main app and I like to track that in one place. You might be interested in git.rake, which solves most (all?) of the common problems people (or at least me) have with managing multiple git submodules. The code is hosted on github: [http://github.com/mdalessio/git-rake/tree/master](http://github.com/mdalessio/git-rake/tree/master) HTH, -m