Windows Github issue pushing a new folder

Question

I'm a VSS (Visual source safe) & Dropbox guy but new to GitHub. I'm using Windows Github tool to manage repositories on our remote server as I concluded in my previous SO post. I was glad to have sought this single point easy to use tool without any need for a deeper knowledge of git.

Things have been working fine until one day I had to add a new folder to my repository. The Windows Github tool wouldn't recognize the folder as a new content to be pushed! After some struggle I derived that it "does" maintain sync with my "initial folders" but simply creating a new folder in the repository directory wouldn't sync it like Dropbox!

I searched to know how I can do it or if I had to use GitShell. My bad any I tried it, failed. Finally, I decided to purge everything and re-create the repository folder structure with this new folder like I did with my initial setup. But I don't know how or why it kept saying that the /.git/index file was being used by another process. I tried to empty this folder but it wouldn't. Finally, a logoff was able to free that file for me and I re-created everything. Pheew!

I might be doing it wrong as a newbie or even misusing Git due to my Dropbox habits. Pls correct me! What would be the best way?

My usage is more like VSS & dropbox(with version control) in a small remotely connected team. I started with this simple Windows Github tutorial. What about the following two -

• TortoiseGit
• msysgit

Do they provide better management? Pls suggest if Windows GitHub is the best (if so how to add folders later?)

Answer 1

Just in case, do note that adding a folder won't trigger anything for Git: you won't be able to push it if that folder is empty, because Git will consider it as "no content", and will ignore that new folder.

See also "How do I add an empty directory to a git repository?".

If you add a folder and some files in it, then the GitHub for Windows interface will detect that new content, and ask you to add and commit, which means you will be able to push.