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- cross-posted to:
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I honestly don’t even understand the joke. Case-insensitive file names cause problems, but what does that have to do with version control branch names?
Inside git’s internal plumbing folder, git holds a file with the branch name and all of the references (files and changes) for that branch.
When you make a new branch git will update its internal plumbing checking to see if the new branch already exists, updates its references to the new branch if it doesn’t (all held internally in a case sensitive way). It will then make that new branch file, git has already checked that the case senitive name for the branch doesn’t exist internally, so it should be good to go.
Part of its process is creating that internal branch file… But wait!
Windows doesn’t have case sensitive naming so when it tries to make that new branch file it will overwrite the old one (since it shouldn’t exist by git’s own reference!) All of the files and references for it now get nuked.
Now you’re at best back to wherever that originally named branch came from, at worse your .git folder is properly borked.
I’m probably going to get downvoted to Hell and back, but someone’s gotta say it: that’s a git problem, not Windows.
First of all, I agree that case-insensitive file systems suck. It makes things inconsistent, especially from a development standpoint.
But, everyone has known that Windows (and macOS) use case insensitive file systems. At least for Windows, it always has been that way.
Git was written in Linux, which uses a case sensitive file system. So it’s no surprise that its internals use case insensitive storage. Someone ported it over to Windows, and I’m sure they knew about the file system differences. They could’ve taken that into account for file systems that are case insensitive, but chose not to do anything to safe guard Windows users.
But until the day that somebody fixes Git, everybody who is not using case sensitive file systems needs to care more about how they name things (and make sure their team does too). Because fuck everyone else, right?
The issue isn’t just a simple oversight. Git includes the file name as part of the tree and commit hash. The hash has security implications. There’s really no way to make the hash support case insensitivity without opening up a multitude of holes there. So there will always be a mismatch, and you can’t just fix it without changing how git works from the ground up.
Of course you can, make it lowercase internally and store the case formatted string for output.
That’d break git repos where files with the same name, but different case exist.
I was talking about branch names, not file names. File duplicates due to case sensitivity aren’t a problem on Windows anyway because those are already enforced by the file system. Unless you have people working on Linux that have multiple files with a similar name but with different casing but those should know better.
Yes you can
Well … everyone using case insensitive FSs need to worry how they name stuff anyway.
Absolutly. And they can just mount the git store using another filesystem. Would be the by far easiest solution.
Or use OS’s where case sensitive FS’s are the default. The ones I have in mind are much better for programming anyway…
I agree that the meme is silly to point to this problem specifically. However, if we leave aside application support as a reason to prefer an OS, then there is really not a lot of arguments left for choosing Windows…
“I’m probably going to get downvoted to Hell and back, but someone’s gotta say it: that’s a git problem, not Windows.”
Beware neckbeards with pitchforks.
You want all applications to explisitly support each individual filesystem? That sounds insane. It is absolutly fair to demand some common ground like posix compliance. And a windows user can like anyone else just mount their git repo area using any other filesystem.
It’s not even actually that bad, at least not since January of 2020: https://stackoverflow.com/a/59687740/1858225
That’s called a workaround. No end user should have to rely on a workaround as a solution to a bug; and make no mistake, it’s a bug.
Sounds like a feature to me
But whose bug is it? Really, Git origins have it tied to Linux development.
Case sensitivity, or the lack thereof, on a filesystem is opinionated. That’s the real issue and is not a bug.
My point is that the claim in the comic and in other comments that this corrupts your repo or loses work simply isn’t true.
Also, if you use an NTFS USB drive to move the .git folder, you will be in trouble.
Thankfully, moving those things to pen drives is very slow, making most users tar it first, anyway, hence sidestepping the problem.Does Mac suffer the same bugs as windows in this case?
Yes. Thankfully in my experience I’ve only dealt with this once or twice. But it’s a pita every time.
I’ve tried switching macOS to a case sensitive file system, but not all programs can handle it (at the time it was Photoshop).
I never understood this. I’ve been using macOS for a long, long time but in Terminal with either bash or zsh it’s always been as picky as Linux/other UNIX systems with casing.
Even in Finder if you navigate to a directory by path you have to use the proper case.
Am I missing something? I haven’t manually chosen a case-sensitive filesystem, but I sure would if it didn’t already seem case-sensitive.
that’s a git problem, not Windows.
I use Git, and I don’t use Windows. I have no problems. Sounds like… a Windows problem?
Now use Photoshop.
Huh. I had forgotten that git does actually create a file with the branch name. But it doesn’t actually screw up the
.gitfolder or lose your data when you try to do a rename like this; it just rejects the rename unless you also use the “force” option. This has been the case since at least January of 2020. But apparently it actually doesn’t always use a local file for branch names, so sometimes there’s a problem and sometimes there isn’t, which I guess is arguably worse than just having consistently-surprising behavior.
Whenever I develop on Windows, I just use the built in Linux.
I got a Mac at work because the Linux on Mac didn’t suck as much as the Linux on windows (docker).
My 8 years old mid range PC beats both to dust on development using the Linux on Linux, but somehow the bosses don’t value my time.
it’s not that they don’t value your time, it’s that they value security compliance checklists over productivity.
in the same boat myself. Told them the same. practicality begged them to allow me to use docker otherwise tasks would balloon from an hour to complete to literal days.
after two weeks of discussion they finally relented. Probably cost the company $50-70k in those two weeks in salaries alone when you include the entire dev team, IT, security, compliance, and mgmt.
it’s amazing that this shitshow called capitalism is still functioning.
Technically the “Linux on Mac” is Unix based and not Linux, but I agree the dev experience is nicer on my Mac than Windows given the choice. Also rather than docker you can use the WSL stuff on Windows for a much closer to normal Linux dev setup (with a few weird edges).
I end up regularly using all three OSes, so it’s helpful you can finally get a serviceable dev environment on any of the common non-mobile OSes now.
I meant using a linux VM to run docker (With Rancher Desktop).
WSL started eating RAM like if there’s was no tomorrow for no reason, even when idle. And considering we had to run memory and cpu intensive tasks, that was a big problem. Several colleges saw the same issue and we all ended up moving to Mac for that reason (well, some of them just because “shiny”).
Oh yeah, I’d say Windows in general just chomps through RAM, but there has been some times that WSL takes it to chrome-like levels
The “built-in Linux” is a VM.
I’m aware, though there’s some nice integration stuff that means you can run GUI applications and share the file system
Interesting fact WSLv1 was actually not a VM and it was the NT kernel speaking POSIX
And this is why the WSL1 filesystem was so damn slow. WSL2 uses a native ext4 filesystem (usually, you can format it to whatever)
Same, luarocks just does not work properly on windows.
I understand the joke, but I never had to change the name of a branch because of a wrong upper/lower case character. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever even renamed a branch. Only matters when you create the PR.
Windows has had the ability to flag individual directories as case-sensitive for a few years now. It’s… something, I guess.
Also, why is the website for the original comic crossed out? It wasn’t completely cropped out or hidden like most asshats do, but it wasn’t left alone either. Someone deliberately went out of their way to vandalize it but did it in perhaps the most pointless possible way? I don’t understand people sometimes.
Eh…. I suppose in one sense it’s making it clear that this isn’t the original. But you can still see where the comic came from.
Thank you for the rabbit hole
My main struggle on Windows is checking in executable files. I keep forgetting the command whenever i have to add a shell script to the project.
Funny to see this today. I had moved a repo from an old Mac laptop to linux months ago, and git couldn’t find the ref to HEAD, because HEAD was pointing to the case insensitive branch name, and it didn’t match the case of the branch. Manually edited HEAD to the correct case to fix it. I should probably recreate the repo for good measure…
A kernel was released that changed how the hash value got computed for casefolded filenames. (used for better windows compatibility) That kernel then went into production. This unfortunately split some file-systems that supported this into two incompatible versions, breaking the kernel rule 1.
There might now exist file-systems were created/modified with this bug present that the old/fixed kernels can’t understand.
