Re: What's cooking in git.git (Oct 2017, #07; Mon, 30)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 31, 2017, 02:38 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqy3ns2g9z.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1.1710301827000.6482@virtualbox>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Hi Junio,
>
> On Mon, 30 Oct 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> * jc/branch-name-sanity (2017-10-14) 3 commits
>>   (merged to 'next' on 2017-10-16 at 174646d1c3)
>>  + branch: forbid refs/heads/HEAD
>>  + branch: split validate_new_branchname() into two
>>  + branch: streamline "attr_only" handling in validate_new_branchname()
>> 
>>  "git branch" and "git checkout -b" are now forbidden from creating
>>  a branch whose name is "HEAD".
>
> Question: should we respect core.ignoreCase and if it is true, compare
> case-insensitively? Or should we just keep the comparison
> case-sensitively, in preparation for a (hopefully near) refs backend that
> does not inherit filesystems' case-insensitivity?

While I do think it would be good if the system as a whole somewhere we had a safety to say "We do not allow hEaD as branch name as you are using the files-backend as your reference storage on a case insensitive filesystem", I do not think it is a good idea to do so in the layer the above patches touch. Once a more capable ref backend comes (Shawn's reftable, anybody???), platforms with case insensitive filesystems can allow refs/heads/hEaD as a branch whose name is hEaD that is different from another branch whose name is hEAD just fine; having the "we are on icase system, so reject" check at the layer would mean we need to remember we have such a check at a wrong layer and revert it when such an improvement happens.