Case sensitivity in Git
GitCase SensitiveGit Problem Overview
I've run into a problem with git. Basically I set to false core.ignorecase because I wanted to change the case of the names of some folders (since I'm under OSX with a case-insensitive filesystem, the changes weren't shown otherwise). When I pulled my data, I've noticed that now every renamed folder appears twice on the repository, with both the old and the new name. I don't know what to do to remove the old folders since they don't appear locally (I've try to set core.ignorecase to true again but it isn't helping).
Git Solutions
Solution 1 - Git
May be a workaround similar to this comment in an msysgit issue (for another case-insensitive OS: Windows) could help?
> I've encountered this same issue. Refactored a package name in Eclipse and switching to a previous build broke due to the folder name not reverting. I'm using Windows 7, Git 1.7.0.2.msysgit.0
>
> My folder was renamed in Windows to "folder" but was displayed as "Folder" in Git.
I fixed the issue by renaming it to "Folder" in Windows and then running:
git mv "Folder" "Folder2"
git mv "Folder2" "folder"
Note that since git 2.0.1 (June 2014), git mv Folder folder should just work!
Solution 2 - Git
Use the following command on macOS. This will change your git configuration to be case sensitive on filenames.
git config core.ignorecase false
You can set this globally by editing ~/.gitconfig and setting it under core such as:
[core]
ignoreCase = false
Solution 3 - Git
You can create a disk image (preferably a sparsebundle disk image) with a case-sensitive file system and checkout your git repository there.
The Disk Utility screenshot below shows how to create a case-sensitive disk image.
Solution 4 - Git
Mac OS X by default is "case insensitive but case preserving". This is an important distinction.
I suggest you create another disk image, and specifically format it as "HFS Case Sensitive".
Solution 5 - Git
git mv "Folder" "Folder2"
git mv "Folder2" "folder"
git commit -a -m "my message"
Solution 6 - Git
There is a longish recent thread on case sensitivity issues on the [email protected] discussion forum titled Bug? Git checkout fails with a wrong error message which highlights the issues, and things to try, of case sensitivity between different platforms.