git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: OS X and umlauts in file names

From
TSThomas Singer <thomas.singer@syntevo.com>
Date
Nov 23, 2009, 20:31 UTC
Message-ID
<4B0AF11A.3030804@syntevo.com>
In-Reply-To
<alpine.DEB.1.00.0911231916510.4897@intel-tinevez-2-302>

I agree, that getting it done correctly could be a long and hard (maybe incompatible) way. Neglecting the problem or blaming platform specific "anomalies" does not help to solve that serious real-world problem for the end-user. IMHO, telling a user to not use non-US-ASCII characters in file names to stay platform-independent seems not to be state-of-the-art and would exclude a lot of users world-wide. Finally, everyone would expect Git to be better than CVS, also at this point.

But what about getting it working "somehow" on OS X in a few minutes? What should I do to be able to stage/commit/work with files containing umlauts in their name on my English OS X (by specifying the file names) as it seems to work magically on a German OS X? Is this topic already /documented/ somewhere (I couldn't find something)?

Thanks in advance, Tom

Johannes Schindelin wrote:
Show 29 quoted lines
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, Thomas Singer wrote:
> 
>> Basically, getting it "somehow" to work on OS X is just one minor step. 
>> IMHO Git should standardize on file names in the repository and do the 
>> platform-specific conversion independent of any locale setting, if 
>> needed.
> 
> That is contrary to the design of Git which honors content (byte-wise!) as 
> much as possible, and treats file names very much as content.
> 
> There were beginnings of supporting OSX' brain-damaged filename mangling, 
> but an obnoxious OSX fan worked very hard on trying to defend the OSX 
> design and to decry Git's respect for the raw bytes on this list, so hard 
> that even the nicest developers had no fun working on this issue anymore.
> 
> This little background may help you understand why there is no solution 
> implemented in Git yet.  And maybe quite a few developers are reluctant to 
> discuss the issue and possible solutions due to said sad story, too.
> 
> Ciao,
> Dscho
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 
>
Previous: Johannes SchindelinNext: Jakub Narebski
Message 5 of 20 in “OS X and umlauts in file names”
  1. Thomas SingerNov 23, 2009
  2. Thomas RastNov 23, 2009
  3. Thomas SingerNov 23, 2009
  4. Johannes SchindelinNov 23, 2009
  5. Thomas SingerNov 23, 2009
  6. Jakub NarebskiNov 23, 2009
  7. Martin LanghoffNov 23, 2009
  8. Daniel BarkalowNov 23, 2009
  9. Thomas SingerNov 25, 2009
  10. B Smith-MannschottNov 25, 2009
  11. Martin LanghoffNov 25, 2009
  12. Martin LanghoffNov 25, 2009
  13. Andreas SchwabNov 25, 2009
  14. Thomas SingerNov 26, 2009
  15. Jay SoffianNov 26, 2009
  16. Thomas SingerNov 27, 2009
  17. Thomas SingerNov 27, 2009
  18. Martin LanghoffNov 27, 2009
  19. Thomas SingerNov 27, 2009
  20. Jay SoffianNov 26, 2009

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.