Re: Minor Bug in Renaming Branches

["Torsten Bögershausen" <tboegi@web.de>]

On 06.06.16 19:52, Samuel Lijin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Not quite sure where to submit bug reports about Git, this was the
> best I could find, so if there's a better place to do this, please let
> me know and I will.
> 
> The short of this issue is that on Mac and Windows, if a branch has a
> slash in its name, changing it from lowercase to uppercase requires
> diving into .git/refs/heads/ and manually moving stuff around - I
> think the behavior should be at least something like this:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26810252/how-to-change-my-local-github-branch-name-to-uppercase.
> 
> It happens that on both Windows box, to rename a branch from
> "branch/name" to "BRANCH/NAME", one has to actually dive into
> .git/refs/heads/ because of how Windows handles upper/lowercase in
> directory paths. (Win7, mingw64 via Git for Bash, git version
> 2.7.0.windows.1)
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~
> $ mkdir sandbox && cd sandbox && git init
> Initialized empty Git repository in C:/Users/user/sandbox/.git/
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (master)
> $ touch empty.txt && git add empty.txt && git commit -m 'initialize repo'
> [master (root-commit) 761113d] initialize repo
>  1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 empty.txt
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (master)
> $ git branch
> * master
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (master)
> $ git checkout -b branch/name
> Switched to a new branch 'branch/name'
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (branch/name)
> $ git branch
> * branch/name
>   master
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (branch/name)
> $ git branch -m BRANCH/NAME
> fatal: A branch named 'BRANCH/NAME' already exists.
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (branch/name)
> $ git branch -m tmp
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (tmp)
> $ git branch -m BRANCH/NAME
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (BRANCH/NAME)
> $ git branch
>   branch/NAME
>   master
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (BRANCH/NAME)
> $ mv .git/refs/heads/branch/ .git/refs/heads/BRANCH/
> user@windows-box MINGW64 ~/sandbox (BRANCH/NAME)
> $ git branch
> * BRANCH/NAME
>   master
> 
> Interestingly, from inside an Ubuntu VM (with the directory in
> question mounted as a VBox fileshare), this is not an issue.
> 
> A colleague on a Mac also reproduces the issue successfully (OSX
> 10.11.5, git 2.8.3):
> 
> mac-box:sandbox user$ touch empty.txt && git add empty.txt && git
> commit -m 'initial commit'
> [master (root-commit) 1f4f1fa] initial commit
>  1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 empty.txt
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch
> * master
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git checkout -b branch/name
> Switched to a new branch 'branch/name'
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch -m BRANCH/NAME
> fatal: A branch named 'BRANCH/NAME' already exists.
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch
> * branch/name
>   master
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch -m tmp
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch
>   master
> * tmp
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch -m BRANCH/NAME
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch
>   branch/NAME
>   master
> mac-box:sandbox user$ mv .git/refs/heads/branch/ .git/refs/heads/BRANCH/
> mac-box:sandbox user$ git branch
> * BRANCH/NAME
>   master
> 
> Thanks,
> Sam
A limitation is introduced by Mac OS and Windows:
BRANCH/NAME and branch/name refer to the same object in the file
system.
As a workaround, you can pack the branch names:
git pack-refs --all
or, 
that is my preference, avoid using the same name upper- and
lower-case.



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