Intro

I used a recursive git rename, but thoughtlessly used it at the top level of my project, where my .git could be effected. Git then broke on all commands with error,

fatal: unknown index entry format 0x72000000

Thankfully this can be easily fixed by removing and resetting the git index¹.

$ rm -rf .git/index
$ git reset

Instead of the rm I just moved the git to a safe place in case I needed something less destructive. But this worked out.

Footnotes

¹ Credit for this easy fix to https://lynxbee.com/solved-git-error-fatal-unknown-index-entry-format-0x16700000