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I've been having issues with one of my git repos deleting all files on commit.

I looked inside the project's .git directory and found a gob of indexes. Check it out:

$ ls .git
COMMIT_EDITMSG              index (from Niflheimr - 2)
FETCH_HEAD                  index (from Niflheimr - 3)
HEAD                        index (from Niflheimr - 4)
ORIG_HEAD                   index (from Niflheimr - 5)
config                      index (from Niflheimr - 6)
description                 index (from Niflheimr - 7)
github-mac-index            index (from Niflheimr - 8)
hooks                       index (from Niflheimr - 9)
index (from Niflheimr - 10) index (from Niflheimr)
index (from Niflheimr - 11) info
index (from Niflheimr - 12) logs
index (from Niflheimr - 13) objects
index (from Niflheimr - 14) refs
index (from Niflheimr - 15) sequencer
index (from Niflheimr - 16)

I think they're bad and they should go away. I'm not sure what the git way would be to heal this and what I can do to prevent this in the future.

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Jack Frost
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  • Are you using plain old `git` or some wrapper, such as GitHub for Mac? – Brian Campbell Apr 12 '12 at 04:31
  • I've been using both `git` and Github for Mac. Both are current versions but I think there may be conflict in my usage. I'll give up the wrapper if that's the issue but I want to fix the repo proper. – Jack Frost Apr 12 '12 at 04:57
  • The fact that you don't have an index (plain file called index) completely explains why commit would make a commit that deletes all the controlled files. It looks like you need to prevent other software from mangling git's internal structure. – CB Bailey Apr 12 '12 at 05:41
  • Do you have GIT_INDEX_FILE set in your environment? – CB Bailey Apr 12 '12 at 05:44

1 Answers1

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It sounds like there's a bug in GitHub for Mac. I would try reporting it to them, at support@github.com. GitHub for Mac is not open source, and doesn't have much documentation available online, so it would probably be best to just ask them about it.

In order to clean up your Git repository, just try cloning it into a new repository. That should keep all of your history, while giving you fresh indexes so that you don't have all of that stuff junking up your .git.

Brian Campbell
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  • Thanks! I've cloned the repository, made commits from both CLI and GUI and only one index file in `.git`. I also opened a ticket with github and I'll update if anything comes of it. – Jack Frost Apr 12 '12 at 18:35