SourceTree says 'No url found for submodule path'

Question

Every time I pull from github I see this

git -c diff.mnemonicprefix=false -c core.quotepath=false -c credential.helper=sourcetree submodule update --init

fatal: No url found for submodule path 'APP NAME' in .gitmodules

Completed with errors, see above

This started happening suddenly. The project has no submodules. This doesn't occur with command-line git, only with source tree. I'm on version 2.6.1 on MacOS 10.12.6

How do I resolve this error?

mikestafford · Answer

I had this same problem -- it showed up suddenly, and I have no submodules (and no .gitmodules). Cliff's solution above did not work for me.

I found that (somehow) one of our developers had created and checked-in an empty folder in the root of the repo that shared the same name as the repo itself. ie, my repo is named "ISTE" and, somehow I ended up with the empty folder blah/ISTE/ISTE/

Git appeared to be interpreting that folder as a reference to the repo, creating some kind of recursive loop. Again, I have no idea how that folder was created, so I don't know how git was mislead...

But, removing that folder from git resolved the issue for me. (To be specific, I first added a dummy file to the folder so that git would recognize an edit, and changed the name of the folder to try to decouple the weirdness; I committed and pushed those changes, then deleted the folder and dummy file and committed & pushed again. All was well after that.)

YMMV...

Francis Paquin-Brien · Answer

Cliff's solution worked for me too. Thanks Cliff!

Cliff Spencer_bqrb0g · Answer

Update: I found this!

bash-3.2$ git ls-files --stage | grep 160000

160000 b06580880c5eaf8b1564f74c30d595bc6a363a13 0 APPNAME

I performed

bash-3.2$ git rm --cached APPNAME and the error was fixed.