From: "Jacob Keller" <jacob.keller@xxxxxxxxx>
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 5:29 PM, Tang (US), Pik S <Pik.S.Tang@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi,
I discovered that I was able to delete the feature branch I was in, due
to some fat fingering on my part and case insensitivity. I never
realized this could be done before. A quick google search did not give
me a whole lot to work with...
Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a feature branch, "editCss"
2. git checkout master
3. git checkout editCSS
4. git checkout editCss
5. git branch -d editCSS
Are you running on a case-insensitive file system? What version of
git? I thought I recalled seeing commits to help avoid creating
branches of the same name with separate case when we know we're on a
file system which is case-insensitive..
Normally, it should have been impossible for a user to delete the branch
they're on. And the deletion left me in a weird state that took a while
to dig out of.
I know this was a user error, but I was also wondering if this was a bug.
If we have not yet done this, I think we should. Long term this would
be fixed by using a separate format to store refs than the filesystem,
which has a few projects being worked on but none have been put into a
release.
Yes, this is an on-going problem on Windows and other case insentive
systems. At the moment the branch name becomes embedded as a file name, so
when Git requests details of a branch from the filesystem, it can get a case
insensitive equivalent. Meanwhile, internally Git is checking for equality
in a case sensitive [Linux] way with obvious consequences such as this - The
most obvious being when there is no "*" current branch marker in the branch
status list.
It's a bit tricky to fix (internally the name and the path are passed down
different call chains), and depends on how one expects the case
insensitivity to work - the kicker is when someone does an edit of the name
via the file system and expects Git to cope (i.e. devs knowing, or think
they know, too much detail ;-).
The refs can also get packed, so the "bad spelling" gets baked in.
Ultimately it probably means that GfW and other systems will need a case
sensitivity check when opening paths...
Philip
Thanks,
Jake
Thanks,
Pik Tang
