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Something something case-insensitive file something...
(lemmy.sdf.org)
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this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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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.