Re: [PATCH] Added support for core.ignorecase when excluding gitignore entries

----- Original Message -----
From: Jeff King
Date: 7/16/2009 3:42 AM

Makes sense, though I can't help but wonder what would happen with a
filesystem that did more than just case (like the utf8 normalization
that happens on HFS).

Should we actually be converting the filesystem names into a canonical
format as they are read? IIRC, Linus posted some patches a few weeks ago
about "git path" versus "filesystem path", but I didn't actually look
too closely.
  

I'm game for whatever.  Git actually has a lot of places where it 
doesn't pay attention to core.ignorecase, and having a standard and 
correct method of comparing filenames would make it easier to handle 
core.ignorecase=true in a more global fashion.

If your patch is the right route, it might be nice to collapse the
comparison into its own function. You end up cutting and pasting a lot
of the related conditionals and returns (like above, where 2 lines
become 9), so it might make sense to do something like:

  int filename_cmp(const char *a, const char *b, int ignore_case)
  {
    return ignore_case ? strcasecmp(a, b) : strcmp(a, b);
  }

and then just s/strcmp/filename_cmp/ at the appropriate callsites.
  

I started off with this method, but it required two functions, one with 
the strcmp() and one for strncmp().  In fact, in other places in the 
code, Git uses memcmp() for comparison.  Is that, then, three filename 
comparison functions, dependent upon intent?  At that point, it felt 
like my change wasn't as self contained anymore, so I then wrote what I 
posted to the list to get feedback.

I'm hoping someone will offer the most correct method to do this, as I 
have a number of patches forthcoming to handle core.ignorecase=true in 
other areas.  The next one covers 'git status' and its reporting of 
'missing' directories due to case differences.

Thanks!

Josh