Re: "Argument list too long" in git remote update (Was: Git and GCC)

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Dec 18, 2007, 01:52 UTC
Message-ID: <20071218015225.GV14735@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <20071218013401.A1716@edi-view2.cisco.com>

Derek Fawcus <dfawcus@cisco.com> wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> On Mon, Dec 17, 2007 at 03:01:25PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > > With git version 1.5.3.6 on Mac OS X, this results in:
> > > potomac%:~/gcc%git remote update
> > > Updating gcc.gnu.org
> > > /opt/git/bin/git-fetch: line 220: /opt/git/bin/git: Argument list too long
> 
> > But maybe there is some way to raise the argument size limit on OS X.
> 
> Well the certification for Leopard claims it can be up to 256k.
> 
> I don't know about Tiger or earlier,  but ARG_MAX on my 10.4
> box is also (256 * 1024).
> 
> So - how much do people want?  Or maybe there is some sort limit in play here?

I heard there's like 1000 branches in that GCC repository, not counting tags.

Each branch name is at least 12 bytes or so ("refs/heads/.."). It adds up.

It should be fixed in latest git (1.5.4-rc0) as that uses the new builtin-fetch implementation, which passes the lists around in memory rather than on the command line. Much faster, and doesn't suffer from argument/environment limits.

-- 
Shawn.