I got an empty directory left over today, and have reduced the problem to this sequence. If I leave out the second add (so the merge is a fast forward), the directory is removed as I would expect. This is with Git 1.6.0.2. Anders and@dylle:~$ mkdir repo ; cd repo and@dylle:~/repo$ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /home/and/repo/.git/ and@dylle:~/repo$ mkdir a ; date >a/b ; git add a/b ; git commit -m'Add 1' Created initial commit 72194c7: Add 1 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 a/b and@dylle:~/repo$ git checkout -b other Switched to a new branch "other" and@dylle:~/repo$ git rm a/b ; git commit -m'Remove 1' rm 'a/b' Created commit 9c0282c: Remove 1 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 a/b and@dylle:~/repo$ git checkout master Switched to branch "master" and@dylle:~/repo$ date >c ; git add c ; git commit -m'Add 2' Created commit 39d60d4: Add 2 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 c and@dylle:~/repo$ git merge other Removed a/b Merge made by recursive. a/b | 1 - 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 a/b and@dylle:~/repo$ rmdir a and@dylle:~/repo$ rmdir a rmdir: failed to remove `a': No such file or directory -- 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