Re: Path character encodings

Paul Betts [off-list ref] writes:

## Proposed Mitigation

For an initial mitigation plan, I'd like to propose adding a warning to either
git clone or git checkout, that if invalid UTF-8 strings are detected, a
warning is printed to the user.

However, without an actionable solution, it's not much of a help other than to
suggest that they downgrade to a lower version of Git.

Hmph, I do not see a reason to make a huge molehill in this. The
pathnames are of unspecified encoding, and if a project declares
that they always use UTF-8, that would be great. Older history may
need to be rewritten but that is a given.

Wouldn't a flag day event per project that runs filter-branch and
have participants restart their repositories be sufficient?  Why
does git itself have to do anything about it, and how would it help
users without hurting other git users who are not involved in such a
project?

Hi Junio,

On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 01:40:32PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Hmph, I do not see a reason to make a huge molehill in this. The
pathnames are of unspecified encoding, and if a project declares
that they always use UTF-8, that would be great. 

I would like to propose, that Git codifies-as-required the majority case
today, that trees should *only* be encoded in UTF-8 going forward. 

Why does git itself have to do anything about it, and how would it help
users without hurting other git users who are not involved in such a
project?

My concern is that users will not know what's happening or how to fix it,
they'll just see messed up paths and assume Git is broken. Even a warning
message would give users something explicit to put into Google to find a
solution for. Not many people will possess the Git-Fu required to manage
filter-branch. 

-- 
Paul Betts [off-list ref]