Why is the `git subtree` not working even though I have git 1.8.3.2 installed on Ubuntu 12.10?

git ubuntu git-subtree
user883807 picture user883807 · Jul 22, 2013 · Viewed 15.3k times · Source

I am about to deploy my AngularJS based static site as a Github Page with Yeoman. Step 3 of the deployment instructions tell me to do

git subtree push --prefix dist origin gh-pages

but when I enter that I get

git: 'subtree' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.

This SO answer provided me instructions on how to upgrade to the latest git-core and ensure it always get upgraded to the latest stable release. 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git

After running those commands I did git --version to make sure I had the latest version and apparently I did since git version 1.8.3.2 was the output. Now when I tried running

git subtree push --prefix dist origin gh-pages

again I still got the same following error

git: 'subtree' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.

Finally I just restarted Ubuntu 12.10 and tried to run the command again but once again, I got the same error.

How come the git subtree command is still not working even though I have upgraded to the current stable release?

Answer

Tobias J picture Tobias J · Nov 21, 2013

It actually is installed on Ubuntu but for some reason it's not put anyplace where git can find it. Easiest way is to create a symlink:

sudo chmod +x /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/subtree/git-subtree.sh
sudo ln -s /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/subtree/git-subtree.sh /usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree

UPDATE 1: looks like a patch has been submitted upstream to fix this but it hasn't yet been merged.

UPDATE 2: the patch to fix this in Debian has been merged, but since they went the route of a separate git-subtree package I don't think this will make it to Ubuntu 12.04. Seems to not be an issue in 14.04 as /usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree is already created correctly by the git package.

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