There is a known bug in git when dealing with merges involving a file that was transformed in a directory (e.g. foo => moved to foo/foo). Merges with branches made prior to such a move will fail. (http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/53402 https://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2007/9/18/270272/thread ) This affects us too: tools/kamctl was moved in tools/kamctl/kamctl. This means that any merge with a branch made prior to 22 Sep will fail, requiring non-trivial manual intervention. We have the following possibilities: 1. ignore and wait for a fixed git version 2. rename tools/kamctl to something else, e.g.: tools/kam_ctl, tools/kamilioctl (only the directory name has to be changed) 3. move tools/kamctl to utils/kamctl I would go for 3 and I would move also pike_top in the process and drop tools/. So is anybody against it? Any reason to keep separate tools/ and utils/ directories?