Re: [RFC] Support UTF-8 characters in Git alias names

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 9, 2026, 14:55 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqikc66k5k.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <aYkaepCu4lwT3xNl@fruit.crustytoothpaste.net>

"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:

> I don't think we have any Unicode normalization code at all in Git,
> though, so if you want a quality implementation, that may be a thing we
> need.

Isn't NKC/NKD a macOS-only issue in practice? Anything on the command line "git" potty and "git-blah" built-in commands receive goes through precompose_argv_prefix() to be normalized on that platform.

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>> Before implementing this, I'd like to hear:
>> 
>> 1. Is this a feature the project would like?
>
> I think this would be useful.  I don't personally plan to use it, but I
> can imagine a lot of other people would, and in general I'm in favour of
> better i18n and l10n support.

I am not fundamentally against this, as long as such an addition does not introduce unnecessary bugs and ambiguities. IOW, do not force me to read bug reports in this area after it is done.

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>> 2. Is my implementation approach reasonable?
>> 3. What concerns should be addressed in said design?
>
> As I said, Unicode normalization may be a thing you want to support
> here.  Not having it isn't a complete dealbreaker, but it would prevent
> hard-to-debug breakage.

A buggy normalization implementation would be also a source of unnecessary bugs. We cannot have and eat that cake so easily ;-).