Re: Git checkout issue - deleting file without apparent reason

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 3, 2017, 01:49 UTC
Message-ID: <20170503014936.emvtrb4edbvauzqc@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAK6FQHcHxwCgzGFCnV_3wvX-sVvL8cHpZH11x6ffbzxUJTTGCQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 09:33:02PM -0400, Paul van Wichen wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> We are having a strange issue that we haven't been able to pin down.
> Scenario: master branch and feature branch both have a specific file.
> 1. Master checked out.
> 2. git status show no changes / clean staging area.
> 3. Checkout feature branch .
> 4. git status show no changes / clean staging area.
> 5. Checkout master again.
> 6. git status shows that a file has been deleted (i.e. the file was
> removed from the file system and the staging area shows it as
> deleted).
> 
> The file exists in both the feature branch and the master branch. As
> best as we can tell, the file is identical on both commits.
> The issue occurs on multiple platforms - tested on Windows and OS X.
> It only occurs for 1 specific file.

Just a guess, but might there be another file in the repository whose name differs only in case? On a case-insensitive filesystem that can cause gremlins like this, because the filesystem cannot represent all of the states in the git tree.

-Peff