How do I commit case-sensitive only filename changes in Git?

Asked 2023-09-20 20:57:30 View 406,052

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.

  • @nif this isn't quite correct, Git actually has a configuration setting that controls whether or not it ignores case sensitivity. - anyone
  • See stackoverflow.com/a/24979063/6309: since git 2.0.1, a simple git mv works. - anyone
  • possible duplicate of Git: Changing capitalization of filenames - anyone
  • @nif Just wanted to add (a few years later ;) that HFS can be made case sensitive, but it's not case sensitive by default. I have a separate 65 GiB partition formatted with case sensitive HFS, which I use for my git working copies. Spares a lot of my sanity, I must admit... - anyone

Answers

As long as you're just renaming a file, and not a folder, you can just use git mv:

git mv -f yOuRfIlEnAmE yourfilename

(As of a change in Git 2.0.1, the -f flag in the incantation above is superfluous, but it was needed in older Git versions.)

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • this gives me 'source directory is empty' while it is not - anyone
  • Using MacOS here (case-insensitive FS) and -f worked! Thanks for the tip - anyone
  • Don't forget to give the full file path. Obvious, I know, but got me for a while - anyone
  • To the top voted comment: you do need the -f switch with the latest git (2.18) otherwise you could get the fatal: destination exists error. - anyone
  • It's important to note that this doesn't work if you're trying to rename a directory instead of a file. If you need to rename a directory, you have to do a git mv for each file in the directory instead. - anyone

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

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • On a side note, I don't think that Mac OS X itself is case-insensitive. Instead, it's the filesystem that determines case-sensitivity. When formatting a HFS+ partition, users can choose whether to make it case-sensitive or insensitive. Case case-insensitive is the default. - anyone
  • It seems very worth noting in this answer that setting this option to 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. - anyone
  • @MarkAmery That sounds a lot like a bug in your Git client. Did you file a report? - anyone
  • @Domi this is not a bug, this is expected behavior. It is in fact a bad idea to set this to false on an insensitive filesystem because this is what happens. The reason why git didn't saw the lower-case file been deleted is that the filesystem doesn't report it as deleted as it does ignore the case while git does not with this option set to false. Its not that the filenames don't have lower vs upper case on ntfs or fat its just that filename lookup is ignoring the case. - anyone
  • @Domi git is smart enough. Thats why you should not set this to false on a case insensitive file system. Use 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. - anyone

Using SourceTree I was able to do this all from the UI

  1. Rename FILE.ext to whatever.ext
  2. Stage that file
  3. Now rename whatever.ext to file.ext
  4. 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

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • The same with git bash - anyone
  • "Stage that file" is the important part - none of the other answers above worked for me. It actually worked with the plain old Windows command prompt. - anyone
  • I didn't realize this worked through the staging area. But in my case, I wanted to modify the folder names as well as some files within those folders. So I first renamed all folders to temporary names. Committed the new names (all files within) and the "deleted" files. Git flagged them all as "renamed". Then renamed all those folders back to their new case versions and committed again. Finally, merged those 2 commits. But based on what you wrote, I could have done the whole thing through the sating area directly, without creating 2 commits + merge. - anyone
  • Works also with gitkraken on folder name. - anyone
  • This must be the simplest and easiest solution to understand suggested here. For git-noobs (like me) to "Stage" a file means to "add" a file without committing file. - anyone

Fix git filename case on whole repo:

git rm -r --cached .
git add --all .

git status ##Review that **only** changes staged are renames

## Commit your changes after reviewing:
git commit -a -m "Fixing file name casing"
git push origin main

Explanation from @Uriahs Victor comment:

What this command actually does is deletes the cached version of the file/folder names that git thought still existed. So it will clear its cache but leave everything in the current folder (where you've made your changes locally) but it will see that those other wrong case folders/files do not exist anymore so will show them as deleted in 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.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • This is the solution. And unlike the other answers it works well when you are doing batch renames. On glamourphilly.org we needed to change every .Jpg to .jpg. In Finder you can do batch renames like that and this answer lets you check it in. - anyone
  • This was the only easy solution for me too - anyone
  • This is the easiest solution by far. Works for files and directories. Thanks! - anyone
  • What this command actually does is deletes the cached version of the file/folder names that git thought still existed. So it will clear its cache but leave everything in the current folder (where you've made your changes locally) but it will see that those other wrong case folders/files do not exist anymore so will show them as deleted in 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 - anyone
  • someone give this man a raise! - anyone

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.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • as the top answer suggests, -f (force) is the flag you are looking for - anyone
  • @rperryng - no, the -f flag doesn't help in case the underlying FS is case-insensitive. However, two-step solution worked for me - anyone
  • Using a case-insensitive FS (on Mac) and -f worked! Thanks for the tip - anyone
  • This also worked with a folder on windows without the -f flag. - anyone
  • git -c "core.ignorecase=false" add . will consider files whose case has been changed for commit. - anyone

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):

  1. git config core.ignorecase (this returns the current setting, e.g. false).
  2. git config core.ignorecase <<true or false>> - set the desired new setting.
  3. ...Run multiple other commands...
  4. git config core.ignorecase <<false or true>> - set config value back to its previous setting.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • Why not directly git -c core.ignorecase=<true or false> checkout <<branch>>? Nothing to reset after. - anyone
  • I had a weird experience of the proposed core.ignorecase working when changing from lowercase to uppercase, but not for uppercase to lowercase. seems the only reliable solution is to stop using an OS which fails to recognise filename case. - anyone
  • Is there a reason why it should be a temporary change? Would that cause any problem if I just leave the settings changed to case sensitive? - anyone
  • This may depend on a few factors, in particular whether the target file system is case sensitive - see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_sensitivity#In_filesystems. The temporary change may be needed if the deployment file system has different case sensitivity to the file system used for development. Also in my case I work in a team where everyone is expected to have the same Git settings (i.e. case sensitive) so if I turn it off it needs to be temporary. - anyone

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

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

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):

Mac Disk Utility Screenshot

Make sure to tell git it is now on a case sensitive FS:

git config core.ignorecase false

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • Nah, nuclear is running a fully case-sensitive boot drive on OSX. You'll have to live without poorly written (ahem, Adobe) apps, or run those in their own case-stupid VM, but it's worth it if you code primarily for *nix systems. - anyone
  • This is the only option that properly works. I've tried the rest and you end up in a pickle one way or another. Solve the problem properly by doing this. - anyone
  • Note that Disk Utility has a bug OS X 10.11 -- It won't create case sensitive images. You need to use the command line tool hdiutil. apple.stackexchange.com/questions/217915/… - anyone
  • With APFS in High Sierra this is even easier. Click the icon of a drive with a plus and add a case-sensitive volume with no limits on size. It just shares space with the main volume and mounts at /Volumes/volume-name. - anyone
  1. rename file Name.jpg to name1.jpg

  2. commit removed file Name.jpg

  3. rename file name1.jpg to name.jpg

  4. amend added file name.jpg to previous commit

    git add name.jpg
    git commit --amend
    

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • I am getting this fatal: bad source, source=name1.jpg, destination=name.jpg at step 3. Do you have suggestion? Thx - anyone
  • You can not do a commit, just git add. - anyone
  • Worked for me. Honestly, its actually correct from an audit point of view. - anyone
  • As CBarr's answer notes, you don't need the intermediate commit here. You can just rename, stage, rename, stage, then commit, without the extra commit in the middle that this answer uses. - anyone

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

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

I tried the following solutions from the other answers and they didn't work:

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.

  1. Visit GitHub.com
  2. Navigate to your repository on GitHub.com and select the branch you're working in
  3. Using the site's file navigation tool, navigate to the file you intend to rename
  4. Does GitHub allow you to edit the file within the browser?
    • a.) Editable
      1. Click the "Edit this file" icon (it looks like a pencil)
      2. Change the filename in the filename text input
    • b.) Uneditable
      1. Open the "Download" button in a new tab and save the file to your computer
      2. Rename the downloaded file
      3. In the previous tab on GitHub.com, click the "Delete this file" icon (it looks like a trashcan)
      4. Ensure the "Commit directly to the branchname branch" radio button is selected and click the "Commit changes" button
      5. Within the same directory on GitHub.com, click the "Upload files" button
      6. Upload the renamed file from your computer
  5. Ensure the "Commit directly to the branchname branch" radio button is selected and click the "Commit changes" button
  6. Locally, checkout/fetch/pull the branch
  7. Done

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • I renamed directly on BitBucket and it worked. Thanks. - anyone
  • Good to know. This technique should theoretically work on any repository hosting platform but I'd be interested to know if there are any that it would not work with. - anyone
  • Doesn't work for files that can't be edited in the browser, like images or PDF; there is no edit option, obviously. - anyone
  • @AbhijitSarkar Good point. I updated my answer for those cases. I tested and verified these instructions work. - anyone

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.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

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.

  1. In Disk Utility, click the + button while the Container disk is selected
  2. Select APFS (Case-Sensitive) under format
  3. Name it Sensitive
  4. Profit
  5. Optional: Make a folder in Sensitive called git and ln -s /Volumes/Sensitive/git /Users/johndoe/git

Your drive will be in /Volumes/Sensitive/

enter image description here

How do I commit case-sensitive only filename changes in Git?

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • I love this suggestion, it elegantly and painlessly solves the problem without resort to ugly workarounds. Thanks! - anyone
  • Just an advise, do not do that, Changing Hard format to 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. - anyone
  • @AmerllicA This doesn't change your system hard drive, only a partition to Case Sensitive. Performance is actually slightly better with case-senstivity on. The solution you linked to does not work for everyone as code that assumes linux-like case senstivity may not run, such as when two files are the same name but different case. - anyone

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

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • This is good but it seems to make the files as new, loosing all history rather than simply renaming the existing file with all of it's changes. - anyone

Years later I need to come back to my own question and provide yet another possible solution! I ran into this issue on a project where only a single file needed to be renamed. This is what I did and it worked for me.

git mv -f src/MyFile.js src/myfile.js

Which I learned both from this thread and this answer

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

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:

  1. remove all non-git files and folder to a different folder/repository.
  2. commit current empty git folder (this will show as all files deleted.)
  3. add all the files back into the original git folder/repository.
  4. commit current non-empty git folder.

This will fix all the case issues without trying to figure out which files or folders you renamed.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • Why not 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. - anyone

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:

  1. git rm Foobar.java
  2. Commit it with a message that you cannot miss git commit -m 'TEMP COMMIT!!'
  3. Pull
  4. 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
    1. Accept your change which is the 'deletion'
    2. git rebase --continue
  5. Now drop your workaround git rebase -i HEAD~2 and drop the TEMP COMMIT!!
  6. Confirm that the file is now called FooBar.java

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

  • -1. I can't repro the error you mention here, and without it the rest of the answer doesn't make sense. Also, doing 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. - anyone

Or simply rename the required file over git repository web UI interface and commit :)

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

I took @FiniteLooper 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()

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

If nothing worked use git rm filename to delete file from disk and add it back.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

I made a bash script to lowercase repository file names for me:

function git-lowercase-file {
  tmp="tmp-$RANDOM-$1"
  git mv -f $1 $tmp
  git mv -f $tmp ${1,,}
}

then you can use it like this:

git-lowercase-file Name.jpg

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30

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.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:57:30