Version Control with Git > 3. Creating a Repository > c. Correcting git init mistakes

c. Correcting git init mistakes

note

Correcting `git init` Mistakes

Wolfman explains to Dracula how a nested repository is redundant and may cause confusion down the road. Dracula would like to remove the nested repository.

How can Dracula undo his last git init in the moons subdirectory?

Solution

Solution – USE WITH CAUTION!

Background

Removing files from a Git repository needs to be done with caution. But we have not learned yet how to tell Git to track a particular file; we will learn this in the next episode. Files that are not tracked by Git can easily be removed like any other “ordinary” files with

$ rm filename

Similarly a directory can be removed using rm -r dirname or rm -rf dirname. If the files or folder being removed in this fashion are tracked by Git, then their removal becomes another change that we will need to track, as we will see in the next episode.

Git keeps all of its files in the .git directory. To recover from this little mistake, Dracula can just remove the .git folder in the moons subdirectory by running the following command from inside the planets directory:

$ rm -rf moons/.git

But be careful! Running this command in the wrong directory will remove the entire Git history of a project you might want to keep. Therefore, always check your current directory using the command pwd.