[git] 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.

To bulk git mv files to lowercase on macOS:

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

It will lowercase all files in a folder.

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.

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

 git mv --force myfile MyFile

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

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.

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

1. Move all files outside of the directory to, let’s, say the desktop.
2. Do a git add . -A to remove all 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.

Working example:

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

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)