Git merge of two commits with rename of a same file

Question

I was wondering how can I merge (or other action like cherry pick, rebase, ...) automatically (without manual resolving) two commits with a rename of a same file. More precisely, I've two commits which do:

A.txt -> B.txt
A.txt -> folder/A.txt

And I want automatically:

A.txt -> folder/B.txt

Is it possible?

I searched solutions but I didn't find automatic ones. I tried merge, rebase, cherry pick. I tried arguments of merge strategies but it didn't work also.

Short answer is: no, there is no way to do it automatically. — LeGEC, Feb 15 '23 at 06:44
This looks like an ABA question, could you please edit your question to explain why you want to do this automatically ? — LeGEC, Feb 15 '23 at 06:44
@LeGEC: what's an ABA question? I've only heard of [XY Problems](https://xyproblem.info). Is it similar? — Joachim Sauer, Mar 14 '23 at 08:48
@JoachimSauer: I think I got mixed up in my acronyms :) yes, that's what I was refering to — LeGEC, Mar 14 '23 at 10:37

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '23 at 08:21

No, unfortunately, it is not possible automatically. You change the name of a file in two incompatible ways. Git cannot possibly know which name to pick (and it definitely isn't going to "make up" a new name that it hasn't seen before).

You must manually resolve this, just like you have to manually resolve 2 changes to the same line.

Why? Let's increase the "difficulty":

folder/A.txt => new/B.txt
folder/A.txt => folder/old/C.txt

What would the result be? new/C.txt? folder/new/B.txt? folder/new/C.txt? folder/B.txt?

Git merge of two commits with rename of a same file

1 Answers1