In a Git repository, how to properly rename a dire

Question

In a Git repository, how to properly rename a directory? I think it should work to copy the directory to be renamed to a new directory with desired name, and delete the old directory, and git add, git commit and push everything. But is this the best way?

Answer 1

1. Change a folder's name from oldfolder to newfolder

git mv oldfolder newfolder

2. If newfolder is already in your repository & you'd like to override it and use:- force

git mv -f oldfolder newfolder

Don't forget to add the changes to index & commit them after renaming with git mv.

3. Renaming foldername to folderName on case insensitive file systems

Simple renaming with a normal mv command(not git mv) won’t get recognized as a filechange from git. If you try it with the ‘git mv’ command like in the following line

git mv foldername folderName

If you’re using a case insensitive filesystem, e.g. you’re on a Mac and you didn’t configure it to be case sensitive, you’ll experience an error message like this one:

fatal: renaming ‘foldername’ failed: Invalid argument

And here is what you can do in order to make it work:-

git mv foldername tempname && git mv tempname folderName

This splits up the renaming process by renaming the folder at first to a completely different foldername. After renaming it to the different foldername the folder can finally be renamed to the new folderName. After those ‘git mv’s, again, do not forget to add and commit the changes. Though this is probably not a beautiful technique, it works perfectly fine. The filesystem will still not recognize a change of the letter cases, but git does due to renaming it to a new foldername, and that’s all we wanted :)

Answer 2

If you receive this error: fatal: renaming ‘foldername’ failed: Invalid argument

Try this:

git mv foldername tempname && git mv tempname folderName

Answer 3

git rm -rf --cached path/to/your/directories

Then re-add and commit.

Answer 4

Simply rename the folder. git is a "content-tracker", so the SHA1 hashes are the same and git knows, that you rename it. The only thing that changes is the tree-object.

rm <directory>
git add .
git commit