Fatal errors on git rm (Operation not permitted)

Xiaolong Tang· Dec 23, 2009, 18:01 UTC · lore

Hi all,

I am running into a trouble with git commands.

I have a repository in my laptop to keep all system settings. 
Specifically, the repository is illustrated as below:
 
reproot/
.git
.gitignore 
`-- lib
    `-- emacs
        `-- lisp
            |-- dictionary
            ...
            |-- git-emacs 
            |   |-- ...
            |   |-- ...
            |   |-- ...
            .. 
            |-- remember

To ease the updating of these third-party Emacs packages (e.g. dictionary, git-emacs, remember and so on), I prefer to get them via version control commands. For example, git-emacs is created via this command: git://github.com/tsgates/git-emacs

This strategy seems to work well when I include (within my laptop repository) those packages which are not managed via git. On the contrary, the trouble arises from including another git repository.

For example, when I try to clone my laptop repository into my desktop, the package "git-emacs" only shows up as an empty directory in the newly repository.

Then when I go back to my laptop repository, there is nothing I can do. Finally, I decide to remove this package from my laptop repository, but end up with the following errors:

git rm -rf git-emacs rm 'lib/emacs/lisp/git-emacs' fatal: git rm: 'lib/emacs/lisp/git-emacs': Operation not permitted

The similar errors happen with removing remember(another package under git) too. 11:53:37->git rm -rf remember rm 'lib/emacs/lisp/remember' fatal: git rm: 'lib/emacs/lisp/remember': Operation not permitted

So, below are my questions: What is the real cause of such kind of problem? How could I fix it?

PS: I did not use git submodule command.

Thanks! Xiaolong

Junio C Hamano· Dec 23, 2009, 18:33 UTC · re: Xiaolong Tang · lore

Re: Fatal errors on git rm (Operation not permitted)

Xiaolong Tang <xiaolong.snake@gmail.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Finally, I decide to remove this package from my laptop repository, but
> end up with the following errors:
>
> git rm -rf git-emacs
> rm 'lib/emacs/lisp/git-emacs'
> fatal: git rm: 'lib/emacs/lisp/git-emacs': Operation not permitted

We don't say "Operation not permitted" ourselves; it is coming from your C library's strerror(3) when we got EPERM error back. The reason you get EPERM can vary depending on your platform and what you did to your directories yourself, but googling for "Operation not permitted" and randomly reading a few might give you hints.