Comment from Git source:
/*
* Read a directory tree. We currently ignore anything but
* directories, regular files and symlinks. That's because git
* doesn't handle them at all yet. Maybe that will change some
* day.
*
* Also, we ignore the name ".git" (even if it is not a directory).
* That likely will not change.
*/
Experiment to see what happend if I create a file .git and try to add it:
(on Windows I cannot create a file .git when there is already a .git folder. I also could have created a .git elsewhere in a sub directory, but wanted to try out --git-dir and --work-tree which I haven’t used before. After all I am experimenting. This also allows me to show that I can add the git metadata folder as seen below)
git --git-dir="c:/test" init
touch blah
git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." add .
git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." status ( shows blah added)
touch .git
git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." add .git ( no output as usual)
git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="." status ( only blah shown)
So yeah, .git – be it directory or file, is ignored by git.
And if I do something like below:
git --git-dir="c:/test" --work-tree="c:/test" add c:/test
all the meta files get added.
So again, it is only .git that is ignored not the git metadata folder (that you set via --git-dir) as far as I can see.