Changing capitalization of filenames in Git

Question

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 1

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.

It does work in a CMD. It might fail in a git bash (on Windows) session (see Louis-Caron's answer)

As noted by jaquinocode in the comments, if your local repository itself has that setting:

git config --local core.ignorecase false

Answer 2

Considering larsks' answer, you can get it working with a single command with "--force":

 git mv --force myfile MyFile

Answer 3

Sometimes you want to change the capitalization of a lot of file names on a case insensitive filesystem (e.g. on macOS or Windows). Doing individual git mv commands will tire quickly. To make things a bit easier this is what I do:

1. Move all affected files outside of the directory to, let’s say, the desktop.
2. Do a git add . -A to stage the removal of those files.
3. Rename all files on the desktop to the proper capitalization.
4. Move all the files back to the original directory.
5. Do a git add .. Git should see that the files are renamed.

Now you can make a commit saying you have changed the file name capitalization.

Answer 4

File names under OS X are not case sensitive (by default). This is more of an OS problem than a Git problem. If you remove and readd the file, you should get what you want, or rename it to something else and then rename it back.

Answer 5

Set ignorecase to false in git config

As the original post is about "Changing capitalization of filenames in Git":

If you are trying to change capitalisation of a filename in your project, you do not need to force rename it from Git. IMO, I would rather change the capitalisation from my IDE/editor and make sure that I configure Git properly to pick up the renaming.

By default, a Git template is set to ignore case (Git case insensitive). To verify you have the default template, use --get to retrieve the value for a specified key. Use --local and --global to indicate to Git whether to pick up a configuration key-value from your local Git repository configuration or global one. As an example, if you want to lookup your global key core.ignorecase:

git config --global --get core.ignorecase

If this returns true, make sure to set it as:

git config --global core.ignorecase false

(Make sure you have proper permissions to change global.) And there you have it; now your Git installation would not ignore capitalisations and treat them as changes.

As a suggestion, if you are working on multi-language projects and you feel not all projects should be treated as case-sensitive by Git, just update the local core.ignorecase file.

Answer 6

You can open the ".git" directory and then edit the "config" file. Under "[core]" set, set "ignorecase = true" and you are done ;)

Answer 7

To bulk git mv files to lowercase on macOS and git bash on Windows:

for f in *; do git mv "$f" "`echo $f | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]"`"; done

It will lowercase all files in a folder.

Answer 8

Answer by Vonc is totally correct, but there is still a potential situation where your rename action would not work with git for windows:

Let's say you want to rename dir/mypath to dir/myPath:

git mv dir/mypath dir/myPath

but it fails reporting:

Rename from 'dir/mypath' to 'dir/mypath' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) 

The problem is that the bash has silently replaced your command line dir/myPath with dir/mypath because it has detected that such a path exists with a different capitalization.

The solution is to use an intermediate move operation:

git mv dir/mypath dir/mypath_temp
git mv dir/mypath_temp dir/myPath

Answer 9

This Python snippet will git mv --force all files in a directory to be lowercase. For example, foo/Bar.js will become foo/bar.js via git mv foo/Bar.js foo/bar.js --force.

Modify it to your liking. I just figured I'd share :)

import os
import re

searchDir = 'c:/someRepo'
exclude = ['.git', 'node_modules','bin']
os.chdir(searchDir)

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(searchDir):
    dirs[:] = [d for d in dirs if d not in exclude]
    for f in files:
        if re.match(r'[A-Z]', f):
            fullPath = os.path.join(root, f)
            fullPathLower = os.path.join(root, f[0].lower() + f[1:])
            command = 'git mv --force ' + fullPath + ' ' + fullPathLower
            print(command)
            os.system(command)

Answer 10

Working example:

git mv ./src/images/poster_video.PNG ./src/images/poster_video.png

Answer 11

I got the following changes on Windows in Sourcetree:

I solved it by removing the file from the file system:

Then simply discard the file I want to keep and commit:

Now everything worked as expected.

Based on this answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/66121726/3850405