error: unable to create file: Illegal byte sequence

Brian Buchalter· Feb 3, 2018, 03:17 UTC · lore

I am attempting to repair a git repo which has an illegal byte sequence but am not sure how to proceed. Steps to reproduce: `git clone https://github.com/christopherpow/nes-test-roms.git` results in:

``` Cloning into 'nes-test-roms'... remote: Counting objects: 1049, done. remote: Total 1049 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 1049 Receiving objects: 100% (1049/1049), 5.23 MiB | 8.97 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (406/406), done. error: unable to create file other/Duelito - L�eme.txt: Illegal byte sequence fatal: unable to checkout working tree warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed. You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status' and retry the checkout with 'git checkout -f HEAD' ```

Running macOS 10.13.3, git version 2.16.1

Thank you!

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason· Feb 3, 2018, 09:01 UTC · re: Brian Buchalter · lore

Re: error: unable to create file: Illegal byte sequence

On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 4:17 AM, Brian Buchalter <bal711@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> I am attempting to repair a git repo which has an illegal byte
> sequence but am not sure how to proceed. Steps to reproduce: `git
> clone https://github.com/christopherpow/nes-test-roms.git` results in:
>
> ```
> Cloning into 'nes-test-roms'...
> remote: Counting objects: 1049, done.
> remote: Total 1049 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 1049
> Receiving objects: 100% (1049/1049), 5.23 MiB | 8.97 MiB/s, done.
> Resolving deltas: 100% (406/406), done.
> error: unable to create file other/Duelito - L�eme.txt: Illegal byte sequence
> fatal: unable to checkout working tree
> warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
> You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status'
> and retry the checkout with 'git checkout -f HEAD'
> ```

You can clone my fork of this which fixes the issue: https://github.com/avar/nes-test-roms

As for fixing this yourself, if your FS can't represent files in the repo the easiest thing is to clone it on a VM with an OS that can (e.g. Linux), or alternatively (and harder for non-experts) is to clone it with --bare and manually create a fixed tree with the various plumbing commands mentioned in "man git".