gitignore(5) manual says that > A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that Git > should ignore. Files already tracked by Git are not affected ... > The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain files not > tracked by Git remain untracked. which means that the following operations are totally correct. $ echo "b" >> .gitignore $ echo "Something" > a $ git add a $ git mv a b Equivalantly, $ echo "b" >> .gitignore $ echo "Something" > b $ git add --force b That is, doing something --force when --force it is not specified. However, this may not be the intented behavior. The user might not want to equivalantly add a `new' file b to the index when b should be gitignored. Such operations are possibly oversight of users. The ideal behavior, issue a warning when git-mv target collides with gitignore. Thanks. -- 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