“Not a git repository: .git ” after using “mv” command?

Question

I used the mv command to move my repository and now running any Git command gives me

fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

The .git folder does indeed exist and all looks ok but it just won't work. Can I rerun the git init here without losing anything?

Answer 1

This usually is the symptome of some kind of corruption within your .git directory during the move.
git init shouldn't be the solution here (unless you want to start over).

Example of corruption:

• No more refs within .git : restoring the refs manually was enough
• file HEAD no longer there : "when compared to a newly created test repository it became obvious that the one commit on the vfat partition had changed the filename HEAD to head…must be a default policy for case-insensitive filesystems"

So the idea would be to clone your repo and compare the .git to the one you just moved, in order to see if there is any difference.
But that supposes you already pushed your repo elsewhere, in order to be able to clone it (since your current -- moved -- repo seems corrupt).