I have changed a few files name by de-capitalize the first letter, as in Name.jpg
to name.jpg
. Git does not recognize this changes and I had to delete the files and upload them again. Is there a way that Git can be case-sensitive when checking for changes in file names? I have not made any changes to the file itself.
git mv
works.
git
working copies. Spares a lot of my sanity, I must admit...
Git has a configuration setting that tells it whether to expect a case-sensitive or insensitive file system: core.ignorecase
. To tell Git to be case-senstive, simply set this setting to false
. (Be careful if you have already pushed the files, then you should first move them given the other answers).
git config core.ignorecase false
Note that setting this option to false on a case-insensitive file system is generally a bad idea. Doing so will lead to weird errors. For example, renaming a file in a way that only changes letter case will cause git to report spurious conflicts or create duplicate files(from Mark Amery's comment).
Documentation
From the git config
documentation:
core.ignorecase If true, this option enables various workarounds to enable git to work better on filesystems that are not case sensitive, like FAT. For example, if a directory listing finds makefile when git expects Makefile, git will assume it is really the same file, and continue to remember it as Makefile. The default is false, except git-clone(1) or git-init(1) will probe and set core.ignorecase true if appropriate when the repository is created.
Case-insensitive file-systems
The two most popular operating systems that have case-insensitive file systems that I know of are
Windows
OS X
false
on a case-insensitive file system is a bad idea. This isn't necessarily obvious. For example, I just tried this on my Mac, thinking it would fix my problems, then renamed a file from productPageCtrl.js
to ProductPageCtrl.js
. git status
saw a new file called ProductPageCtrl.js
but didn't think that productPageCtrl.js
had been deleted. When I added the new files, committed, and pushed to GitHub, the GitHub repo now contained both files even though my (supposedly up to date) local repo had only one.
git mv
to move the file and see how git manages it. If you move the file without git, there is nothing git can do as the filesystem isn't telling the truth to git. This is an issue of ntfs/fat/hfs and thelike and not git/linux.
Using SourceTree I was able to do this all from the UI
Rename FILE.ext to whatever.ext Stage that file Now rename whatever.ext to file.ext Stage that file again
It's a bit tedious, but if you only need to do it to a few files it's pretty quick
This is what I did on OS X:
git mv File file.tmp
git mv file.tmp file
Two steps because otherwise I got a “file exists” error. Perhaps it can be done in one step by adding --cached
or such.
-f
(force) is the flag you are looking for
-f
flag doesn't help in case the underlying FS is case-insensitive. However, two-step solution worked for me
-f
worked! Thanks for the tip
-f
flag.
git -c "core.ignorecase=false" add .
will consider files whose case has been changed for commit.
I used those following steps:
git rm -r --cached .
git add --all .
git commit -a -m "Versioning untracked files"
git push origin master
For me is a simple solution
git status
. Then you can push up to github and it will remove the folders/files with wrong cases. This answer has a graphic depicting what the command means: stackoverflow.com/a/41863575/4484799
Sometimes it is useful to temporarily change Git's case sensitivity.
Method #1 - Change case sensitivity for a single command:
git -c core.ignorecase=true checkout mybranch
to turn off case-sensitivity for a single checkout
command. Or more generally: git -c core.ignorecase=
<<true or false>>
<<command>>
. (Credit to VonC for suggesting this in the comments.)
Method #2 - Change case sensitivity for multiple commands:
To change the setting for longer (e.g. if multiple commands need to be run before changing it back):
git config core.ignorecase (this returns the current setting, e.g. false). git config core.ignorecase <
git -c core.ignorecase=<true or false> checkout <<branch>>
? Nothing to reset after.
We can use git mv command. Example below , if we renamed file abcDEF.js to abcdef.js then we can run the following command from terminal
git mv -f .\abcDEF.js .\abcdef.js
Under OSX, to avoid this issue and avoid other problems with developing on a case-insensitive filesystem, you can use Disk Utility to create a case sensitive virtual drive / disk image.
Run disk utility, create new disk image, and use the following settings (or change as you like, but keep it case sensitive):
https://i.stack.imgur.com/YNtpX.png
Make sure to tell git it is now on a case sensitive FS:
git config core.ignorecase false
Similar to @Sijmen's answer, this is what worked for me on OSX when renaming a directory (inspired by this answer from another post):
git mv CSS CSS2
git mv CSS2 css
Simply doing git mv CSS css
gave the invalid argument error: fatal: renaming '/static/CSS' failed: Invalid argument
perhaps because OSX's file system is case insensitive
p.s BTW if you are using Django, collectstatic also wouldn't recognize the case difference and you'd have to do the above, manually, in the static root directory as well
rename file Name.jpg to name1.jpg commit removed file Name.jpg rename file name1.jpg to name.jpg amend added file name.jpg to previous commit git add name.jpg git commit --amend
fatal: bad source, source=name1.jpg, destination=name.jpg
at step 3. Do you have suggestion? Thx
git add
.
I tried the following solutions from the other answers and they didn't work:
git mv filename
git rm -f filename
If your repository is hosted remotely (GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket), you can rename the file on origin (GitHub.com) and force the file rename in a top-down manner.
The instructions below pertain to GitHub, however the general idea behind them should apply to any remote repository-hosting platform. Keep in mind the type of file you're attempting to rename matters, that is, whether it's a file type that GitHub deems as editable (code, text, etc) or uneditable (image, binary, etc) within the browser.
Visit GitHub.com Navigate to your repository on GitHub.com and select the branch you're working in Using the site's file navigation tool, navigate to the file you intend to rename Does GitHub allow you to edit the file within the browser? a.) Editable Click the "Edit this file" icon (it looks like a pencil) Change the filename in the filename text input b.) Uneditable Open the "Download" button in a new tab and save the file to your computer Rename the downloaded file In the previous tab on GitHub.com, click the "Delete this file" icon (it looks like a trashcan) Ensure the "Commit directly to the branchname branch" radio button is selected and click the "Commit changes" button Within the same directory on GitHub.com, click the "Upload files" button Upload the renamed file from your computer Ensure the "Commit directly to the branchname branch" radio button is selected and click the "Commit changes" button Locally, checkout/fetch/pull the branch Done
With the following command:
git config --global core.ignorecase false
You can globally config your git system to be case sensitive for file and folder names.
Mac OSX High Sierra 10.13 fixes this somewhat. Just make a virtual APFS partition for your git projects, by default it has no size limit and takes no space.
In Disk Utility, click the + button while the Container disk is selected Select APFS (Case-Sensitive) under format Name it Sensitive Profit Optional: Make a folder in Sensitive called git and ln -s /Volumes/Sensitive/git /Users/johndoe/git
Your drive will be in /Volumes/Sensitive/
https://i.stack.imgur.com/6M3Vp.png
How do I commit case-sensitive only filename changes in Git?
APFS (Case-sensitive)
makes your system very slow and you will face many weird issue, I faced ReactNative build issue, some addresses could not be found. so it's better to have APFS
the default of the company. for git case it's better to use this solution.
When you've done a lot of file renaming and some of it are just a change of casing, it's hard to remember which is which. manually "git moving" the file can be quite some work. So what I would do during my filename change tasks are:
remove all non-git files and folder to a different folder/repository. commit current empty git folder (this will show as all files deleted.) add all the files back into the original git folder/repository. commit current non-empty git folder.
This will fix all the case issues without trying to figure out which files or folders you renamed.
git commmit --amend
in In paragraph 4? Otherwise, there will be an extra commit with the removal of all files. Or you can use git rebase -i
with squash.
I've faced this issue several times on MacOS. Git is case sensitive but Mac is only case preserving.
Someone commit a file: Foobar.java
and after a few days decides to rename it to FooBar.java
. When you pull the latest code it fails with The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout...
The only reliable way that I've seen that fixes this is:
git rm Foobar.java Commit it with a message that you cannot miss git commit -m 'TEMP COMMIT!!' Pull This will pop up a conflict forcing you to merge the conflict - because your change deleted it, but the other change renamed (hence the problem) it Accept your change which is the 'deletion' git rebase --continue Now drop your workaround git rebase -i HEAD~2 and drop the TEMP COMMIT!! Confirm that the file is now called FooBar.java
git rebase --continue
without a rebase in progress just yields a "No rebase in progress?" error, and there's no rebase in progress during step 4.2, so running that command there doesn't make sense either.
so there are many solutions to this case sensitivity deployment problem with how GitHub handles it.
In my case, I had changed the filename casing convention from uppercase to lowercase.
I do believe that git can track the change but this command git config core.ignorecase false
dictates how git operates behind the scenes
In my case, I ran the command and git suddenly had lots of files to track labeled untracked.
I then hit git add. , then git committed and ran my build on netlify one more time.
Then all errors now displayed could be traced e.g Module not found: Can't resolve './Components/ProductRightSide' in '/opt/build/repo/components/products
and fixed such that git was able to track and implement the changes successfully.
It's quite a workaround and a fingernail away from frustration but trust me this will surely work.
PS: after fixing your issue you may want to run the command git config core.ignorecase true
to restore how git works with case sensitivity.
Also, note git config core.ignorecase false
has issues with other filename extensions so you may want to watch out, do it if you know what you’re doing and are sure of it.
Here's a thread on netlify that can help out, possibly
I took @CBarr answer and wrote a Python 3 Script to do it with a list of files:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import os
import shlex
import subprocess
def run_command(absolute_path, command_name):
print( "Running", command_name, absolute_path )
command = shlex.split( command_name )
command_line_interface = subprocess.Popen(
command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, cwd=absolute_path )
output = command_line_interface.communicate()[0]
print( output )
if command_line_interface.returncode != 0:
raise RuntimeError( "A process exited with the error '%s'..." % (
command_line_interface.returncode ) )
def main():
FILENAMES_MAPPING = \
[
(r"F:\\SublimeText\\Data", r"README.MD", r"README.md"),
(r"F:\\SublimeText\\Data\\Packages\\Alignment", r"readme.md", r"README.md"),
(r"F:\\SublimeText\\Data\\Packages\\AmxxEditor", r"README.MD", r"README.md"),
]
for absolute_path, oldname, newname in FILENAMES_MAPPING:
run_command( absolute_path, "git mv '%s' '%s1'" % ( oldname, newname ) )
run_command( absolute_path, "git add '%s1'" % ( newname ) )
run_command( absolute_path,
"git commit -m 'Normalized the \'%s\' with case-sensitive name'" % (
newname ) )
run_command( absolute_path, "git mv '%s1' '%s'" % ( newname, newname ) )
run_command( absolute_path, "git add '%s'" % ( newname ) )
run_command( absolute_path, "git commit --amend --no-edit" )
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
If nothing worked use git rm filename to delete file from disk and add it back.
I made a bash script to lowercase repository file names for me:
function git-lowercase-file {
tmp="tmp-$RANDOM-$1"
new=$(echo "$1" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
git mv -f $1 $tmp
git mv -f $tmp $new
}
then you can use it like this:
git-lowercase-file Name.jpg
If you're doing more complex change, like directory name casing change, you can make that change from a Linux machine, because Linux itself (as well as git on Linux) treats files/directories with same names but different casing as completely different files/directories.
So if you're on Windows, you can install Ubuntu using WSL, clone your repo there, open the cloned repo directory using VSCode (use WSL remote extension to access WSL Ubuntu from Windows), then you will be able to make your renames through VSCode and commit/push them using VSCode git integration.
Success story sharing
-f
switch with the latest git (2.18) otherwise you could get thefatal: destination exists
error.git mv
for each file in the directory instead.