I dropped several internal repositories that were getting checked out to subdirectories under the top-level /docs directory. Now I'd like to check out a new public repository there. When I test my manifest change, I get:

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error: Cannot fetch chromiumos/docs (GitError: --force-sync not enabled; cannot overwrite a local work tree. If you're comfortable with the possibility of losing the work tree's git metadata, use `repo sync --force-sync docs` to proceed.)
...
Exception in thread Thread-33:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 810, in __bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 763, in run
    self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
  File "/derat/chromeos/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 276, in _FetchProjectList
    success = self._FetchHelper(opt, project, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/derat/chromeos/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 321, in _FetchHelper
    cache_dir=opt.cache_dir)
  File "/derat/chromeos/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1293, in Sync_NetworkHalf
    self._InitGitDir(force_sync=force_sync)
  File "/derat/chromeos/.repo/repo/project.py", line 2346, in _InitGitDir
    raise e
GitError: --force-sync not enabled; cannot overwrite a local work tree. If you're comfortable with the possibility of losing the work tree's git metadata, use `repo sync --force-sync docs` to proceed.

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It looks like I have an even-older .repo/projects/docs.git directory in my checkout. When I move it away, I'm able to sync the new public repository without any trouble, but I'd rather not make everyone else either do this or run the --force-sync command.

To the best of my knowledge, I never made any changes to the old repository and didn't have any local commits. Is there any way to handle this more gracefully, or should I just send out a PSA? (Why doesn't repo rename the old repository?)