"Icon" file in GitHub-managed MATLAB Project

I am new to both "Projects" and collaborating via GitHub.

In the past few months, I turned an existing project into a Project and later put it under GitHub source control so that a student can begin merging in her contributions.

Somewhere along the way there appeared in the project directory called Icon. It appears in the directory listing on the left of the MATLAB window, and it has a green dot to indicate that it's up-to-date in Git. When I look in the Finder on my Mac, I see no such file. A directory listing using ls -l at the terminal returns:

-rw-r--r--@ 17 roy staff 0 Nov 18 02:50 Icon?

That puts the date as yesterday, which is weird, since I haven't touched the project in a few weeks, and it doesn't help me figure out whether this is related to the Project or to Git/GitHub.

The student is also new to Projects and GitHub. She downloaded the project, made some modifications, and tried to commit her changes within MATLAB. She got the error message

error: invalid path 'Icon?'

fatal: make_cache_entry failed for path 'Icon?'

So, lots of questions.

• What is Icon?
• Was it created when I created the project or when I put it under version control?
• Can I get rid of it?

Thanks

[Mario Malic]

Hello,

First time seeing something like this.

Does the file appears in the Project Files window or in the Current Folder window? If it's under Project right click it and remove from Project and it might be resolved. Do you see it in the output if you type

!git status

[Roy Goodman]

It's in both the Project Files window and the Current Folder widow.

It does not appear in the output from

!git status

So you think it's just something I added accidentally and can remove?

[Mario Malic]

Can you check on Project tab, Source Control panel - Branches if you are on the latest branch?

Most likely, it should not be an issue if you remove it from the project first.

Answer 1

[Roy Goodman]

I had not been actively editing so I was on the main branch. I just created a branch to experiment with removing this file and am testing to make sure that this doesn't break anything.

[Roy Goodman]

That worked. I'm learning the virtues of version control. Thanks for your help.

[Mario Malic]

Me as well, it's super neat feature. You're welcome.