Hi, maybe this has already been reported, but I didn't find it in the mail archive. If I understand correctly, after I clone a repo, I should be able to switch to branch foo just by running git checkout foo This doesn't seem to work if a folder called "foo" exists in the root of the repo. I got the same behavior with git 1.8.3.2 on a Mac and git 1.7.9.5 on Linux. Steps to reproduce: git clone https://github.com/dbpedia/extraction-framework.git cd extraction-framework/ First the happy path - there is a remote branch "live-dev", but no folder "extraction-framework/live-dev": git checkout live-dev Response: Branch live-dev set up to track remote branch live-dev from origin. Switched to a new branch 'live-dev' Fine! Now the unhappy path - there is a branch "wiktionary", but also a folder "extraction-framework/wiktionary": git checkout wiktionary Nothing - no response, no changes to working tree. .git/index seems to be modified though. Slightly different - cd to some folder, try checkout again: cd mappings git checkout wiktionary Response: error: pathspec 'wiktionary' did not match any file(s) known to git. My workaround is that when I switch to a branch for the first time, I have to call git checkout -t -b wiktionary --track origin/wiktionary Response: Branch wiktionary set up to track remote branch wiktionary from origin. Switched to a new branch 'wiktionary' Looks good. After that, I can switch back and forth between branches just by git checkout wiktionary / git checkout master. Cheers, Christopher -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html