Changing capitalization of filenames in Git
I am trying to rename a file to have different capitalization from what it had before:
git mv src/collision/b2AABB.js src/collision/B2AABB.js
fatal: destination exists, source=src/collision/b2AABB.js, destination=src/collision/B2AABB.js
As you can see, Git throws a fit over this. I tried renaming using just the plain old mv command as well, but Git doesn't pick up the rename (as a rename or as a new untracked file).
How can I change a file to have a different capitalization of the same name? I am on Mac OS X v10.7.3 (Lion) with Git 1.7.9.1 using Z shell (zsh) 4.3.15.
Answer
Starting Git 2.0.1 (June 25th, 2014), a git mv will just work on a case insensitive OS.
See commit baa37bf by David Turner (dturner-tw).
mv: allow renaming to fix case on case insensitive filesystems
"git mv hello.txt Hello.txt" on a case insensitive filesystem always triggers "destination already exists" error, because these two names refer to the same path from the filesystem's point of view and requires the user to give "--force" when correcting the case of the path recorded in the index and in the next commit.
Detect this case and allow it without requiring "
--force".
git mv hello.txt Hello.txt just works (no --force required anymore).
The other alternative is:
git config --global core.ignorecase false
And rename the file directly; git add and commit.