Bug: Git rename does not work if folder naming was changed from lower to upper case on OSX

Hi,

after having committed folders with lower case naming, I decided to rename them to upper-case names. Expecting git to detect them as renamings, it started a new parallel hierarchy with new files, which I had to add/commit.

It was a kinda strange behavior, which I fixed by rename the folder to something completely different, commit and rename the folder again to the desired value.

Is this an actual desired behavior or is it a bug?

Robert

It is expected (but may be unexpected), I hope these hints are not too harsh: You can blame the vendor of the OS, who decided to design a file system which ignores the case of files. (Or yourself, because you use it) (Or yourself, because you can install a HFS+ partition under OSX which is NOT case insensitive, but few people seem to know about this or use it) (harsh mode off)

The correct way to rename a file under Git is to use Git:

git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/ttt/.git/
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>mkdir dir1
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>echo File >dir1/file
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>git add dir1/file
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>git commit -m "add dir1/file"
[master (root-commit) 14d3862] add dir1/file
  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
  create mode 100644 dir1/file
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>git mv dir1/file DIR1/FILE
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>git commit  "mv dir1/file DIR1/FILE"
user@Mac:/tmp/ttt>git ls-files
DIR1/FILE

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 12:47:13PM +0200, Robert Eisele wrote:

Note that git does not store that files are renamed. So a remove + add is the same as a rename in git. Only git status shows it when you for example use git mv directly, but this information is lost on commit. Instead of storing it get relies on detecting what (parts of ) files got renamed, copied etc.

Kevin Daudt <me@ikke.info> writes:

Are you sure about the last sentence? I do not recall teaching anything special to "git status". If "git status" says A was created by renaming B, and if you committed that state was-is, "git show" on the result commit _should_ say the same thing, I would think.

That statement I belieave is true.

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 06:47:29PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Yes, of course, you are right. Git status also detects a file being renamed instead of relying on it being recorded.

Why are you reserved here?

Kevin.