Re: git: cannot rename foo to Foo on a case-insensitive filesystem (e.g. on Windows)

From: Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com>
Date: Aug 29, 2007, 09:31 UTC
Message-ID: <1BA15C6C-1F37-401B-B8D8-4BD147CF5225@wincent.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0708290321530.28586@racer.site>

El 29/8/2007, a las 4:23, Johannes Schindelin escribió:

Show 29 quoted lines

> On Wed, 29 Aug 2007, Wincent Colaiuta wrote:
>
>> El 28/8/2007, a las 22:45, Johannes Schindelin escribi?:
>>
>>> On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Wincent Colaiuta wrote:
>>>
>>>> Personally, I don't like HFS+ much at all, but your statement that
>>>> Mac OS X "doesn't even have a case sensitive filesystem" is false.
>>>
>>> It is right that they support it.  But since the _default_ is case
>>> insensitive (but only as long as it is not _reporting_ file  
>>> names), it
>>> is _as bad_ as "doesn't even have a case sensitive filesystem".  No
>>> sophistry helps here.
>>
>> I don't think my correction qualifies as "sophistry" by any  
>> reasonable
>> definition of the word. Andreas claimed that Apple had turned "a
>> perfectly decent unix-clone such as FreeBSD into some defect  
>> monstrosity
>> that doesn't even have a case sensitive filesystem"; I merely  
>> sought to
>> correct his misstatement.
>
> I acknowledged that.
>
> But it does not change the _meaning_ of Andreas' criticism.  They  
> took a
> perfectly sane system, and turned it into a mess.

I don't think it's productive to enter into arguments about whether a particular operating system is a "monstrosity", "sane" or "a mess"; that's why I limited my comment to a correction of a factual misstatement by Andreas and left the opinion part unchallenged. We could have avoided this thread if instead of "doesn't even have a case sensitive filesystem", he'd started his flame with "defaults to a using a case-insensitive filesystem".

> Yes, you _can_ change the setting.  No, most don't.  Yes, the  
> effect is...
> you guessed it: the same as if they did not allow case sensitivity  
> at all.

While I agree that most just accept the default, your argument here and in your previous email is spurious; it amounts to saying "A and B is offered, but because A is the default it is the same as if B were not supported at all", which isn't valid logic. If you limited your argument to criticizing case-insensitive filesystems then I would have to agree with you; I am not a fan of them. Likewise, if you said that the default has undesirable consequences I would also concur. It's your attempt to extend your claim to an argument for equivalence that I can't buy.

> Plenty of people have this setup

Agreed...

> and we have to suffer.

but, don't you think you're exaggerating a bit here? How much "suffering" has this really caused you? I gather that you're not even a user of that operating system; I am (have been since the first developer previews), have always accepted the default filesystem choice, don't even like the filesystem (have ranted repeatedly about its flakiness on my weblog), but I think I've run into case- insensitivity issues two times. If you want to talk about "suffering" then ask me about HFS+ data integrity.

Cheers, Wincent