Deleting files

Hi,

Are files supposed to be continually tracked after commiting after deleting 
them?

git status reports that files have been deleted as expected (they're not 
there anymore). I commit as wanted. I do some more work, but then git status 
still reports that the same files have been deleted. As such I have a 
historical list of "deleted" files that I may have been working on 
previously and had committed.

I have to run git rm to erase these entries, but I've no idea how that 
affects my history.

Shouldn't git add/commit remember that a file has been deleted previously?

On a related note, once I do git rm on one of these files, git status 
sometimes reports that these rm'd files have been renamed to a new one 
instead! What's going on? :(

Shak