Re: RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Mar 8, 2017, 15:40 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1703081638010.3767@virtualbox>
In-Reply-To: <22719.59633.269164.986923@chiark.greenend.org.uk>

Hi Ian,

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017, Ian Jackson wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Linus Torvalds writes ("Re: RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan"):
> > Of course, having written that, I now realize how it would cause
> > problems for the usual shit-for-brains case-insensitive filesystems.
> > So I guess base64 encoding doesn't work well for that reason.
> 
> AFAIAA object names occur in publicly-visible filenames only in notes
> tree objects, which are manipulated by git internally and do not
> necessarily need to appear in the filesystem.
> 
> The filenames in .git/objects/ can be in whatever encoding we like, so
> are not an obstacle.

Given that the idea was to encode the new hash in base64 or base85, we *are* talking about an encoding. In that respect, yes, it can be whatever encoding we like, and Linus just made a good point (with unnecessary foul language) of explaining why base64/base85 is not that encoding.

Ciao, Johannes