git-cherry-pick no longer detecting moved files in 1.5.3.4

["Richard Quirk" <richard.quirk@gmail.com>]

I recently upgraded from git 1.5.3 to 1.5.3.4 and my cherry picks from
path/to/file.c to path/to/subdir/file.c stopped working. The error being:

CONFLICT (delete/modify): path/to/file.c deleted in HEAD and modified
in 9f944cb... <commit msg> Version 9f944cb... <commit msg> of
path/to/file.c left in tree.

The history of my project is that I had an extra sub directory that I
got rid of, moving files up a level on the master branch but this
extra directory is still present on a "release" branch. It is to this
release branch that I am cherry picking changes from the master one.
This worked fine in 1.5.4.

I tracked the change that scuppered my cherry picking down to this fix
by Linus for rename detection limits:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commit;h=0024a54923a12

Seems like I hit the limit there - the moving changed the location of
about 140 files. I tried setting diff.renamelimit to -1 but to no
avail. Is it that the config value only applies for git-diff, not
git-cherry-pick? (Also, minor thing this, but the docs for git-config
says it is diff.renameLimit but diff.c uses diff.renamelimit.)
Recompiling with diff_rename_limit_default set to -1 in diff.c "fixes"
the cherry picking, but isn't ideal. Anyone have any ideas for a
better workaround/fix?

thanks,
Richard