How do I rename the .git directory?

Question

How do I rename the .git directory?

Say for instance I have a repo that I have been working with for some time but now I decide to rename the .git directory. I tried the bash mv command but after I did that git status said the my working directory is not a git repository.

Answer 1

No idea why you would ever want to rename that, but anyway...

Git expects :

• either a .git directory to exist under the current directory, or one of its parents,
• or the GIT_DIR environment variable to be set.

Generally, unless very special circumstances are in effect, you should never tread apart from .git. It is this directory which contains everything (the same way Subversion 1.7+ uses a .svn directory and CVS uses CVS directories -- only that git only uses one directory at the root)

The only exception to this are bare repositories, for which you need to be in the git directory itself -- but you normally never touch these directly unless you really know what you are doing.

Answer 2

You cannot and should not rename the .git directory itself, it is a fixed name (well, unless you pass --git-dir= to every git command or set the GIT_DIR environment variable). Git searches for this directory when it performs operations on the repository, such as git status.

Why do you decide you want to rename the .git directory? If you want to rename the repository, simply rename the parent directory of .git.