pathspec: problems with too long command line

 From our GUI client we are invoking git operations on a possibly large 
set of files. This may result in pathspecs which are exceeding the 
maximum command line length, especially on Windows [1] and OSX [2]. To 
workaround this problem we are currently splitting up such operations by 
invoking multiple git commands. This works well for some commands (like 
add), but doesn't work well for others (like commit).

A possible solution could be to add another patchspec magic word which will read paths from a file instead of command line. A similar approach can be found in Mercurial with its "listfile:" pattern [3].

Does that sound reasonable? If so, we should be able to provide a corresponding patch.

-Marc

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031210-00/?p=41553/ [2] https://serverfault.com/questions/69430 [3] https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/help/patterns