From: Shawn O. Pearce Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:52:25 GMT Subject: Re: "Argument list too long" in git remote update (Was: Git and GCC) Message-ID: <20071218015225.GV14735@spearce.org> In-Reply-To: <20071218013401.A1716@edi-view2.cisco.com> Derek Fawcus wrote: > 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.