Re: Cloned repository has file changes -> bug?

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 27, 2018, 19:59 UTC
Message-ID: <87607nvzrd.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <BCFDB3A3-B515-4932-AC67-F720AEB4B0BE@kuleuven.be>

On Sat, Jan 27 2018, Filip Jorissen jotted:

> I think our git repository is bugged. The reason why I say this is the
> following. When cloning the repository, the newly cloned repository
> immediately has file changes[...].

If you run this:

    git ls-files | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sort | uniq -D | grep '^'

You'll see that the reason is that you have files that differ only in case.

You are using a Mac, and Macs by default think that files that are different binary strings are the same file, since they don't consider case to be relevant. The file FOO, foo and FoO and fOo are all the same file as far as your Mac is concerned, but would be 4 different files on Linux.

> How can I fix the repository?

You could check it out on a OS that considers files that differ in case to be different files, e.g. on Linux, move them around, push it, and new clones should work on your Mac.

Alternatively I hear that you can create a loopback case-sensitive FS image on Macs.