Re: Sparse checkout not working as expected (colons in filenames on Windows)

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Mar 24, 2015, 23:43 UTC
Message-ID: <90D5D4B5F2ED41A6AB07E291004AA615@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8BOuhohQzaGzD+4cthqOaL4sz1ADRD-ekhFhKt4wMcg7A@mail.gmail.com>

From: "Duy Nguyen" <pclouds@gmail.com>

Show 60 quoted lines

> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 6:07 AM, Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org> 
> wrote:
>> Hi, I was expecting that sparse checkout could be used to avoid the 
>> checking
>> out, by git, of files which have colons in their name into the 
>> worktree when
>> on Windows.
>>
>> Yue Lin Ho reported on the Msygit list [1] that he had a repo where 
>> there
>> was already committed a file with a colon in it's name, which was a 
>> needed
>> file and had been committed by a Linux user. The problem was how to 
>> work
>> with that repo on a Windows box where such a file is prohibited to 
>> exist on
>> the FS (hence the expectation that a sparse checkout would suffice). 
>> Yue has
>> created a short test repo [2]
>>
>> Even after getting the pathspec escaping right, I still haven't been 
>> able to
>> make this expected behaviour work [3].
>>
>> Am I wrong to expect that sparse checkout (and the skip-worktree bit) 
>> can be
>> used to avoid files with undesirable filenames hitting the OS's file 
>> system?
>>
>> If it should be OK, what's the correct recipe?
>>
>> --
>> Philip
>>
>> [1]
>> https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en_US?hl%3Den#!topic/msysgit/D4HcHRpxPgU
>> "How to play around with the filename with colon on Windows?"
>> [2] Test repo https://github.com/t-pascal/tortoisegit-colons
>>
>> [3] test sequence::
>> $ mkdir colons && cd colons
>> $ git clone -n https://github.com/t-pascal/tortoisegit-colons
>> $ cd tortoisegit-colons/
>> $ git config core.sparseCheckout true
>> $ cat .git/info/sparse-checkout # external editor
>> /*
>> !ifcfg-eth0\:0
>
> Colons have no special meaning in gitignore rules and therefore need
> not be escaped. The backslash is considered a literal character in
> this case, probably not what you want.
>
>> $ git update-index --skip-worktree -- ifcfg-eth0\:0
>> Ignoring path ifcfg-eth0:0
>> $ git checkout -b test 7f35d34bc6160cc # tip commit, we are still 
>> unborn!
>> error: Invalid path 'ifcfg-eth0:0
>> D       ifcfg-eth0:0
>> Switched to a new branch 'test'
> --

I've corrected the sparse-checkout, but won't the command line 'git update-index --skip-worktree' will still need it? (demo commands below)

That said, the final error (which I'd missed in the earlier post) is: fatal: make_cache_entry failed for path 'ifcfg-eth0:0'

This is on the Windows (pre-compiled msysgit at v1.9.5) Git bash, so could be a catch path in that code for make_cache_entry (I've not checked the code yet). So at the moment it doesn't look like sparse checkout can be used to avoid colons in windows on-disk files based on the current code. -- Philip

Philip@PHILIPOAKLEY /d/Git_repos/colons $ cd tortoisegit-colons/

Philip@PHILIPOAKLEY /d/Git_repos/colons/tortoisegit-colons (test) $ git update-index --skip-worktree -- ifcfg-eth0\:0 Ignoring path ifcfg-eth0:0

Philip@PHILIPOAKLEY /d/Git_repos/colons/tortoisegit-colons (test) $ git reset error: Invalid path 'ifcfg-eth0:0' fatal: make_cache_entry failed for path 'ifcfg-eth0:0'