Changing capitalization of filenames in Git

Starting Git 2.0.1 (June 25th, 2014), a git mv will just work on a case-insensitive OS.

See commit baa37bf by David Turner (dturner-tw).

mv: allow renaming to fix case on case-insensitive filesystems

"git mv hello.txt Hello.txt" on a case-insensitive filesystem always triggers "destination already exists" error, because these two names refer to the same path from the filesystem's point of view and requires the user to give "--force" when correcting the case of the path recorded in the index and in the next commit.

Detect this case and allow it without requiring "--force".

git mv hello.txt Hello.txt just works (no --force required anymore).

The other alternative is:

git config --global core.ignorecase false

And rename the file directly; git add and commit.

It does work in a CMD. It might fail in a git bash (on Windows) session (see Louis-Caron's answer)

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

 git mv --force myfile MyFile

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.