Why do I get “fatal: git status --porcelain failed”?

Question

This is a huge pain in the bum. I\'ve got this a few times before and I don\'t understand why. 5 mins ago the repo was fine and working, I move some files around (which is a

Answer 1

I had the same issue. Running git status in my root project's directory produced the following error:

fatal: This operation must be run in a work tree
fatal: 'git status --porcelain' failed in submodule js/object-subscribe

Running git status in the affected submodule (js/object-subscribe) would produce this error:

fatal: This operation must be run in a work tree

Running git init in that submodule's folder did it for me.