Seems git turned a folder into a text file

Question

I have code in a repo that I've been happily pushing up for many a month. Today I checked and there is a local folder named 'pages' in my working dir, but in the origin, it is only a text file.

PS W:\dev> git status
On branch master
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.

nothing to commit, working tree clean

Looking at the local files

PS W:\dev> ls .\pages\


    Directory: W:\dev\pages


Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
d-----        29/01/2022   7:09 pm                charts
d-----        21/12/2020   1:56 pm                tables
d-----        30/12/2020   3:58 pm                transactions

This is what the pages files looks like in the repo, just a string

I don't have anything in my gitignore file.

Could someone let me know how I can add the 'pages' directory? Bonus points if someone can tell me what I did wrong to accomplish this weirdness.

As suggested, I checked if it was a sub-repo, but does not seem to be the case:

Answer 1

pages is a submodule.

Check if there is a .gitmodules file at the root of your repository, you will see the details about what repo this pages submodule comes from.