How to get mercurial to notice files added into subdirectories? (hg st, hg add)

Question

If I add a new file into my project's root, it appears with a ? status in hg st, and gets added with hg add.

However, if I add a new file into a subdirectory, it doesn't appear in hg st at all, and only gets added if I explicitly add the file (not even if I add the file's containing directory).

How can I get mercurial to notice files in subdirectories, in a similar way to how subversion notices them?

Thanks

Solution 1

Well, plain hg add without any extra arguments adds files in sub-directories as well, it basically adds all files with status unknown to be tracked.

However, if you specify a simple mask, it only operates on your current working directory (ie. the working directory of the hg command, not the working directory associated with the repository), so if you're currently situated in the sub-directory, it will add those files, if you're in the root directory, it will add those files instead.

In other words, this:

hg add test*

Only operates on files in the directory you're currently situated.

You can override that behavior by specifying a mask that tells hg to operate on sub-directories:

hg add **/test*

This says "add all files that match 'test*' in the current directory and all sub-directories.

If you remove one of the asterixes, you only operate on sub-directories of the current working directory.

It would help if you posted what specific commands you executed, and the output, if any, and the output of hg st before and after.

Solution 2

Did you hg init in the subdirectory as well? If so, don't. Below illustrates the issue:

C:\>hg init project
C:\>cd project
C:\project>hg init sub
C:\project>echo >file1
C:\project>echo >sub\file2
C:\project>hg st
? file1

Delete the subfolder's .hg directory to fix it:

C:\project>rd /s/q sub\.hg
C:\project>hg st
? file1
? sub\file2

Unlike Subversion, Mercurial only uses an .hg directory at the root of a project.

Comments

[GJ.]

I'm not applying any mask. I just add a file in a subdir and do an hg st, and see no output (not even an unknown ? status for the file). If I do the same thing in the root directory, I do see the file with an unknown status. It's worthwhile to mention the subdir isn't in ignored in the .hgignore

[Lasse V. Karlsen]

What is the name of the directory, and what is the name of the file, and can you post your .hgignore file, just in case?

[Lasse V. Karlsen]

Oh, and check @Mark Tolonen's answer here as well, it might be that that's your problem.

[GJ.]

Thanks Mark but no, I didn't hg init any subdir, and there's no .hg directories other than in my root. Any other idea?

[Mark Tolonen]

Only idea is to post a complete example of the commands leading up to the problem. Do you have an .hgignore at all? Maybe something is accidently matching. What happens if, in a brand new directory, you hg init, make create a file, create a subdir, create a file in the subdir, and hg status? That should show both files.