"git checkout foo" is getting confused by folder named "foo"

[Jona Christopher Sahnwaldt <jc@sahnwaldt.de>]

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