ERROR: Stage file '<path-to-dvc>.dvc' cannot be an output.

[i-Hun]

Hi!
I faced a strange and previously unseen issue trying to add some newly created files to DVC with dvc add <path-to-files>.
The full error log is

Stage is cached, skipping.                                                                                  
  0% Add|                                                                   |0.00/1.13k [00:00,     ?file/s]
ERROR: Stage file 'data/xDeepFM-2-1/lbes_cat_101.jbl.dvc' cannot be an output.    

DVC: version 0.82.8.
OS: Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

[efiop]

Hi @i-Hun !

Looks like you are trying to dvc add a .dvc-file, right? If so, it is not allowed.

[i-Hun]

Oh, you are right. Thanks and sorry for the silly question.

[Roman-]

Oh, you are right. Thanks and sorry for the silly question.

This isn't as silly as it might seem, especially when one does dvc add ./dataset1/* which adds all subdirectories (with existing .dvc files!) of the dataset1 directory. I think dvc should not cancel its job in these cases and just ignore adding .dvc files to dvc.

[vargonis]

@Roman- I'm running exactly into the problem you describe. I tried adding .dvc to .dvcignore, to no avail. Any suggestion to be able to add all the contents of a directory that was previously added, thus creating the corresponding .dvc files inside?

[dberenbaum]

@vargonis If you have a directory full of .dvc files, you should be able to do something like:

$ dvc remove dir/*.dvc
$ dvc add dir