From: Tim Uckun Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 05:44:48 GMT Subject: Re: can anybody explain the following to a git noob? Message-ID: <855e4dcf0905212244r454a5c21w7bdbfb566a28efb8@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <32541b130905212202q9aed54cn892171b7e654812f@mail.gmail.com> >> *********Try to rename a directory  WTF?: Git thinks any directory with a >> .git folder is empty and refuses to rename the directory. > > Well, why do other folders contain .git directories? It just worked out that way. I am experimenting with a rails app and those plugins were pulled from github. >  Are they > *separate* git repositories?  If so, git doesn't know what to do with > them and leaves them alone.  (Well, in fact it treats them as > submodules.) yes they are separate repositories. I would be happy if it left them alone or treated them as submodules. I was just puzzled as to why git thought they were empty when they were clearly not. > All your other weird problems seem to come from this, as far as I can > tell.  If not, it would be helpful if you could give *complete* > reproduction steps for your problem. Those were the complete steps. I did no other operations on the directory. So the fact that the test directory is misbehaving is because a directory in the vendor hierarchy has a .git folder? I'll have to clean up all those and see if the problem remains.