Re: bug: HEAD vs. head on case-insensitive filesystems

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jul 11, 2017, 07:12 UTC
Message-ID: <20170711071234.bj3kzfn5xii4e33w@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20170711033236.GA11492@lenny.localdomain>

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 08:32:36PM -0700, Kenneth Hsu wrote:

> I'm not sure what the general consensus is regarding the use of "head"
> vs. "HEAD" on case insensitive filesystems, but it appears that some
> confusing behavior (bug?) may have arisen.

Generally, the advice on "head" is "don't". It's an accident that it works at all, and as you noticed, there are odd corner cases. There are similar oddities when mixing and matching case for other refnames on case-insensitive filesystems, too.

I was going to point you to the recent thread in

  http://public-inbox.org/git/87ziclb2pa.fsf@gmail.com/

but I see you already participated there. So if your mail here is "here's a summary of how HEAD/head don't quite work", then OK, that might be handy. But I think the ultimate resolution is not "let's make them work", but "let's consistently enforce case-sensitivity in ref names, regardless of the underlying filesystem".

-Peff