mkspiffs make dist error message: cant find spiffs.h plus solution

[larryn46]

I tried ~/esp32/esp-idf/components/mkspiffs-master $ git submodule update --init
I didn't notice anything happening, though. Next I ran make dist
~/esp32/esp-idf/components/mkspiffs-master $ make dist
got error message spiffs.h not found.

There is a subdirectory under mkspiffs-master called spiffs but it is empty. I searched for spiffs.h on my hard drive, and found the likely one in ~/esp32/esp-idf/components/spiffs/spiffs/src/spiffs.h along with several other files. I copied these 7 files into mkspiffs-master/spiffs/src. When I ran make dist, it looks like it worked.

[igrr]

spiffs directory is empty because it is a submodule. You need to run git submodule update --init in mkspiffs directory to fetch the submodule.

See the first command line of build instructions: https://github.com/igrr/mkspiffs/blob/master/README.md#build

Also make sure you are cloning mkspiffs using git clone command, and not downloading a .zip file from GitHub UI.