Remove directory in hierarchy while preserving status in git

I have a repository like

  /file1
  /file2
  /dir_a/file3
  /dir_a/file4
  ...

how can I remove dir_a and move all its content one directory up (in this case to /) while keeping the status of all files (untracked, changed but not staged), which may be contained in / but also in dir_a开发者_如何学Go?

git-mv should be able to handle this. Use git mv -k dir_a/* ., and the staged/unstaged status will be preserved. This will not move untracked files, so use mv dir_a/* . afterwards.

# shelving unstaged stuff
git stash
# moving content from /dir_a to /
# that should suffice as git doesn't track directories but only files
git status -uno -s | grep "src_dir" | awk '{print "-n " $2 " dest_dir"}' | xargs -n3 git mv -f
# than move what remains in source dir manually:
mv src_dir/* dest_dir
# resurrect unstaged changes
git stash pop

Second line could be better but it worked for me.