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

In my case after moving moduleA/mySubmodule to moduleB/mySubmodule using git mv moduleA moduleB with git 2.12.2, I ran into the following error:

$ git status
fatal: Could not chdir to '[../]moduleA/mySubmodule': No such file or directory
fatal: 'git status --porcelain' failed in submodule mySubmodule
fatal: 'git status --porcelain' failed in submodule moduleB

Then I did the following (Maybe not in this order)

1. Manually update .gitmodules entry to moduleB
2. Enter .git/modules and rename old module folder
3. Enter moduleB and delete submodules folder
4. Run git submodule sync and git submodule update

After that, I could run git status again without problems.