"git commit" fails due to spurious file in index

Hello all:

This is my first time posting to this mailing list, but it appears to me, through a Google search, that this is where you go to report what might be bugs. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it is mysterious to me.

My git repository has this directory structure (I don't know if the file names are necessary or not; only the leaf directories contain files):

    $ tree -ad -I.git
    .
    └── admin_scripts
        ├── integchk
        │   ├── 2012
        │   └── 2014
        ├── jrnadmin
        │   ├── 2012
        │   └── 2014
        └── logarchiver
            ├── 2012
            └── 2014

    10 directories

The last commit in this repo was a rearrangement of the hierarchy carried out using `git mv`. Before, the directory structure went `admin_scripts/version/script_name` instead of `admin_scripts/script_name/version`.

Now I'm attempting to some new files that I've already created into the repository, so that the repo now looks like this (`setup/2012` contains files, while `setup/2014` is empty):

    $ tree -ad -I.git
    .
    └── admin_scripts
        ├── integchk
        │   ├── 2012
        │   └── 2014
        ├── jrnadmin
        │   ├── 2012
        │   └── 2014
        ├── logarchiver
        │   ├── 2012
        │   └── 2014
        └── setup
            ├── 2012
            └── 2014

    13 directories

Now, when I run 'git add admin_script/setup' to add the new directory to the repo and then try to commit, I receive the following message:

    $ git commit
    mv: cannot stat `admin_scripts/setup/2012/setup': No such file or directory

The error message is correct in that `admin_scripts/setup/2012/setup` does not exist, either as a file or as a directory. However, I'm not attempting to add this path at all. Using grep, I've confirmed that the only place this path appears in any of my files is in `.git/index`.

Also, I can commit to other places in the repository without triggering any error. In addition, I can clone the repository to other locations and apply the problematic commit manually. This is how I've worked around the problem for now, and I've moved the repository that's exhibiting problems to another directory and started work on the cloned copy.

Why is this spurious path appearing in the index? Is it a bug, or a symptom that my repo has been somehow corrupted? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Robert Irelan | Server Systems | Epic | (608) 271-9000