What's the deal with renaming files in Git?

If you try renaming a file in your project, you might notice this weird behaviour when checking its status: `$ git status On branch master Your branch is up-to-date with ‘origin/master’.

Changes not staged for commit: (use “git add/rm …” to update what will be committed) (use “git checkout — …” to discard changes in working directory)

deleted: README.md

Untracked files: (use “git add …” to include in what will be committed)

README-NEW.md

no changes added to commit (use “git add” and/or “git commit -a”)`

Why is this happening?

The short answer is: Git relies on names to know if whether a file is tracked or not. When you rename a file, Git believes the original file got deleted and suddenly there’s a new file in which it knows nothing about. Hence the untracked status.

Alternative: rename with Git

If you want to avoid this behaviour, you could simply use the native Git command: git mv `$ git mv README.md README-NEW.md $ git status On branch master Your branch is up-to-date with ‘origin/master’.

Changes to be committed: (use “git reset HEAD …” to unstage)

renamed: README.md -> README-NEW.md`

Nice and easy.

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