Subject: Re: Branch Name Case Sensitivity

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:50:45 -0800

Lee Hopkins <[email-masked]> writes:

> Last week I ran across a potential bug with branch names on case
> insensitive file systems, the complete scenario can be found here:
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/msysgit/ugKL-sVMiqI
>
> The tldr is because refs are stored as plain text files except when
> packed into packed-refs, Git occasionally cannot tell the difference
> between branches whose names only differ in case, and this could
> potentially lead to the loss of history.
>
> It sounds like this is a known issue, and after some more digging I
> did find some older threads related to this topic, but nothing recent.

Yes, it is not limited to branch names but also applies to tags and
filenames in your working tree.

Perhaps git-{branch,tag}.txt and possibly gitrepository-layout.txt
in Documentation/ may need a new "*Note*" section to warn against
this.

Thanks.