Trying to commit a directory that has been git init. Receiving " fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories) "

Question

I can commit individual files within the directory, but it will not allow me to commit the whole directory.

Answer 1

You need to be in that folder for the git commit to work.
And you need to add it first

This wouldn't work:

git init test
git add test
git commit -m "add test"

This would work:

git init test
cd test
git add .
git commit -m "add test"

You can check if the folder is part of a repo:

cd test
git rev-parse --git-dir

Make sure no environment variable like GIT_DIR is defined (which would make the git command look for a git repo elsewhere)