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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?

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14 Answers 14

Reset to default
2041

Basic rename (or move):

git mv <old name> <new name>

Case sensitive rename—eg. from casesensitive to CaseSensitive—you must use a two step:

git mv casesensitive tmp git mv tmp CaseSensitive

(More about case sensitivity in Git…)

…followed by commit and push would be the simplest way to rename a directory in a git repo.

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18 Comments

Does it save all the log and statistics?
@ViliusK if you are dealing with case sensitive directories any easy way i've found is git rm -rf --cached path/to/your/directories then re-add and commit
But why GIT doesnt have a proper support for name change for a package/directory? Why do I even need to create a separate folder. When i change a name of the package shouldnt it take it as a difference and take care of it at the time of commit & push?
Thanks a lot for this. For me, I had to first execute git config core.ignorecase false and then run the commands in succession or else, for the second part I'd get a source is empty error.
On Windows 10, when renaming a directory, git mv would complain: Rename from [x] to [y] failed. Should I try again? (y/n) even with Administrator privileges. The rename only succeeded from the console when I closed a File Explorer window that was viewing the parent directory which contained the directory I was renaming.
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207

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

Try this:

*nixOS

git mv foldername tempname && git mv tempname folderName

WinOS

git config core.ignorecase false; git mv foldername tempname; git mv tempname folderName

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5 Comments

This is exactly what I needed to do a case-change in a directory.
The token '&&' is not a valid statement separator in this version. git version 2.11.0.windows.
@Tim Hardy it can also be run as two separate commands, git mv foldername tempname and git mv tempname folderName, which should work on Windows.
this does not work ! the end result will put new 'folderName' folder inside the 'tempname' folder
The git config core.ignorecase false is not required. Enough just: git mv <full-path> <full-path>~<random-name>; git mv <full-path>~<random-name> <full-path>
102

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 :)

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26

lots of correct answers, but as I landed here to copy & paste a folder rename with history, I found that this

git mv <old name> <new name>

will move the old folder (itself) to nest within the new folder

while

git mv <old name>/ <new name>

(note the '/') will move the nested content from the old folder to the new folder

both commands didn't copy along the history of nested files. I eventually renamed each nested folder individually ✔

git mv <old name>/<nest-folder> <new name>/<nest-folder>
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18

You can rename the directory using the file system. Then you can do git rm <old directory> and git add <new directory> (Help page). Then you can commit and push.

Git will detect that the contents are the same and that it's just a rename operation, and it'll appear as a rename entry in the history. You can check that this is the case before the commit using git status

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8 Comments

hey, but this way, I'll loose whole commit history.
You can retain it if you use the -follow flag.
Two commands instead of one, and having to add a flag? Is this better than git mv in any way?
@topper No, git mv is just an alias for rm+add. Using git mv is a better solution.
@topper Note that you'll still have to use --follow to view the history regardless of which method you use to move the file.
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Here's an example for renaming a directory.

git mv src/dir1/ src/dir2/

If you get an error stating Permission Denied, you can try:

git mv src/dir1 src/temp/ git mv src/temp src/dir2
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1 Comment

works well this should be a more acceptable answer 👍
4

From Web Application I think you can't, but you can rename all the folders in Git Client, it will move your files in the new renamed folders, than commit and push to remote repository.

I had a very similar issue: I had to rename different folders from uppercase to lowercase (like Abc -> abc), I've renamed all the folders with a dummy name (like 'abc___') and than committed to remote repository, after that I renamed all the folders to the original name with the lowercase (like abc) and it took them!

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4

Simple Trick

You can just rename the directory with any temp name and then rename again and it will work

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1 Comment

This is a great trick! saved a lot of time, thank you
3

I tried with the following command and it didn't work. I was receiving a fatal: renaming '...' failed: Invalid argument error.

git mv oldName NewName

Then solved with the following method:

  1. First I duplicate the folder I wanted to rename
  2. Then I ran the following command to remove the folder
git rm oldName -r
  1. Renamed the duplicated folder to NewName
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3

Just a heads up, the accepted answer won't work unless you give complete folder paths. Otherwise, you'd get fatal: bad source error.

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1 Comment

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review
2

For case sensitive renaming, git mv somefolder someFolder has worked for me before but didn't today for some reason. So as a workaround I created a new folder temp, moved all the contents of somefolder into temp, deleted somefolder, committed the temp, then created someFolder, moved all the contents of temp into someFolder, deleted temp, committed and pushed someFolder and it worked! Shows up as someFolder in git.

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1 Comment

Imo we don't really need a temp folder, required steps: 1. Rename somefolder to any other name (for example somefolder1) 2. Commit and push changes 3. Rename somefolder1 to someFolder 4. Commit and push changes
1

I had an issue using the git mv <old dir> <new dir> command as it nests it.

The solution that worked for me was the simple one:

  • rename the file using File Explorer
  • git add .

Then git status shows the files were renamed

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0

renaming in git is difficult because the index will have to change and the tree object will be created after commit. I had the problem of renaming templates to Templates... I solved the problem by

  • copying Templates to templates in bash [cp -r Templates templates ] (git mv Templates templates will not work)
  • removing Templates in bash [rm -r Templates ](check that the copying was successful first)
  • Removing the Templates file from the index[use "git ls-files -s" to see the index, "git rm " you can use wildcards such as git rm Templates/*, continue checking the index]
  • Adding the renamed paths to the index ("git add -v ." and check the result with "git ls-files -s"
  • Commit ["git commit -m "renaming ... "
  • If you have remotes git push <to wherever origin,
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-28

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> // remove the directory $ git add . // add changes to the git $ git commit // commit removed directory
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1 Comment

This does not work always. It surely did not work for me for sth. like 20% files...

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