Thread (43 messages) 43 messages, 5 authors, 2025-09-17
STALE282d

[PATCH v4 3/4] refs/files: handle F/D conflicts in case-insensitive FS

From: Karthik Nayak <hidden>
Date: 2025-09-17 15:25:27
Subsystem: the rest · Maintainer: Linus Torvalds

When using the files-backend on case-insensitive filesystems, there is
possibility of hitting F/D conflicts when creating references within a
single transaction, such as:

  - 'refs/heads/foo'
  - 'refs/heads/Foo/bar'

Ideally such conflicts are caught in `refs_verify_refnames_available()`
which is responsible for checking F/D conflicts within a given
transaction. This utility function is shared across the reference
backends. As such, it doesn't consider the issues of using a
case-insensitive file system, which only affects the files-backend.

While one solution would be to make the function aware of such issues,
this feels like leaking implementation details of file-backend specific
issues into the utility function. So opt for the more simpler option, of
lowercasing all references sent to this function when on a
case-insensitive filesystem and operating on the files-backend.

To do this, simply use a `struct strbuf` to convert the refname to
lowercase and append it to the list of refnames to be checked. Since we
use a `struct strbuf` and the memory is cleared right after, make sure
that the string list duplicates all provided string.

Without this change, the user would simply be left with a repository
with '.lock' files which were created in the 'prepare' phase of the
transaction, as the 'commit' phase would simply abort and not do the
necessary cleanup.

Reported-by: Junio C Hamano <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Karthik Nayak <redacted>
---
 refs/files-backend.c | 19 +++++++++++++++++--
 t/t5510-fetch.sh     | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 37 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/refs/files-backend.c b/refs/files-backend.c
index d1af5d6bc7..bfdf85121a 100644
--- a/refs/files-backend.c
+++ b/refs/files-backend.c
@@ -906,8 +906,23 @@ static enum ref_transaction_error lock_raw_ref(struct files_ref_store *refs,
 		 * If the ref did not exist and we are creating it, we have to
 		 * make sure there is no existing packed ref that conflicts
 		 * with refname. This check is deferred so that we can batch it.
+		 *
+		 * For case-insensitive filesystems, we should also check for F/D
+		 * conflicts between 'foo' and 'Foo/bar'. So let's lowercase
+		 * the refname.
 		 */
-		item = string_list_append(refnames_to_check, refname);
+		if (ignore_case) {
+			struct strbuf lower = STRBUF_INIT;
+
+			strbuf_addstr(&lower, refname);
+			strbuf_tolower(&lower);
+
+			item = string_list_append_nodup(refnames_to_check,
+							strbuf_detach(&lower, NULL));
+		} else {
+			item = string_list_append(refnames_to_check, refname);
+		}
+
 		item->util = xmalloc(sizeof(update_idx));
 		memcpy(item->util, &update_idx, sizeof(update_idx));
 	}
@@ -2832,7 +2847,7 @@ static int files_transaction_prepare(struct ref_store *ref_store,
 			       "ref_transaction_prepare");
 	size_t i;
 	int ret = 0;
-	struct string_list refnames_to_check = STRING_LIST_INIT_NODUP;
+	struct string_list refnames_to_check = STRING_LIST_INIT_DUP;
 	char *head_ref = NULL;
 	int head_type;
 	struct files_transaction_backend_data *backend_data;
diff --git a/t/t5510-fetch.sh b/t/t5510-fetch.sh
index 6f8db0ace4..08dbea6503 100755
--- a/t/t5510-fetch.sh
+++ b/t/t5510-fetch.sh
@@ -53,6 +53,12 @@ test_expect_success "clone and setup child repos" '
 		cd case_sensitive &&
 		git branch branch1 &&
 		git branch bRanch1
+	) &&
+	git clone --ref-format=reftable . case_sensitive_fd &&
+	(
+		cd case_sensitive_fd &&
+		git branch foo/bar &&
+		git branch Foo
 	)
 '
 
@@ -1572,6 +1578,20 @@ test_expect_success REFFILES 'existing reference lock in repo' '
 	)
 '
 
+test_expect_success CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS,REFFILES 'F/D conflict on case insensitive filesystem' '
+	test_when_finished rm -rf case_insensitive &&
+	(
+		git init --bare case_insensitive &&
+		cd case_insensitive &&
+		git remote add origin -- ../case_sensitive_fd &&
+		test_must_fail git fetch -f origin "refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*" 2>err &&
+		test_grep "failed: refname conflict" err &&
+		git rev-parse refs/heads/main >expect &&
+		git rev-parse refs/heads/foo/bar >actual &&
+		test_cmp expect actual
+	)
+'
+
 . "$TEST_DIRECTORY"/lib-httpd.sh
 start_httpd
 
-- 
2.51.0
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