Re: Deleted folder keeps showing up?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sep 4, 2009, 08:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20090904082708.GA17157@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <34230C98-81B8-4DC8-846F-8B6FA2A022DA@gmx.de>

On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 06:59:18PM +0200, Benjamin Buch wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I made a branch and deleted a folder there with git rm -rf foldername.
> So now i have to branches, A with the folder and B without the folder.
> 
> I'm on B, the folder is not there.
> Then I check out A, the folder shows up like it should.
> When I check out B again, the folder is still there.

Is there anything in the folder, like untracked files generated by your build process? Remember that git tracks full paths, not directories. So you never actually "deleted a folder" but rather deleted all of the paths inside that folder.

When you switch to branch A, git creates the folder, because it contains tracked files. When you switch back to branch B, git will remove the tracked files, and will remove the directory _only_ if it is then empty. Anything else would mean deleting your untracked files, which may be precious.

You mentioned in a later email that you were having trouble reproducing the issue. Try:

  $ git checkout A
  $ make ;# or whatever your build process is, or
         ;# normal work or whatever
  $ git checkout B

and see if that reproduces it.

-Peff