Question

I know that git provides the ‘git rm’ and ‘git mv’ to remove/move files or directories. But, I can’t see the practical use case for this.

Normally, I just mv or rm the files or whatever in the command line, and after I’m done with all the necessary actions, I can just run ‘git add -u’ and ‘git add .’, as I asked and got answers in here.

Am I missing something? Are there any cases that only ‘git rm’ and ‘git mv’ capable of?

Answer 1

git mv and git rm are about updating the index directly. While directly moving or deleting files in the working tree won’t immediately affect the index.

The GitFaq does present git mv as:

just a convenience. The effect is indistinguishable from removing the file and adding another with different name and the same content.