Filesystems and case-insensitivity [LWN.net]

Filesystems and case-insensitivity

Posted Nov 29, 2018 1:02 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510)
In reply to: Filesystems and case-insensitivity by tnoo
Parent article: Filesystems and case-insensitivity

The filenames generated by git just use 0-9 and a-f, I don't see how case insensitivity would cause any problems.

Git, like most applications, already has to be prepared to work on case-insensitive filesystems.

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Filesystems and case-insensitivity

Posted Nov 29, 2018 4:06 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

The problem is tags, which once ended up as file and directory names.
Git has a "packed-refs" file these days, so the problem *should* be solved, but I haven't checked.

Filesystems and case-insensitivity

Posted Nov 29, 2018 15:31 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

I haven't looked in a while either, but I think like packed objects it's just an optimization, and refs can also be created in unpacked formats.

File and directory names are a problem too, of course. If a directory you're storing in git includes both foo and FOO, then you'll have a problem when you try to check it out on a case-insensitive filesystem.

I don't think that's really fixable; some people actually do have such content which they need to track in git, others can't deal with it, it's up to the user to decide what they care about.

But git works on case-insensitive filesystems if the stuff you put into it does.