Re: Odd issue - The Diffs That WILL NOT DIE.

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Dec 07, 2011 at 05:24:01PM -0500, Chris Patti wrote:

> Yup, you nailed it.  The files in question are CloudSponge.php
> (deleted) and Cloudsponge.php (still being actively maintained).
> [...]
> Actually I'm wrong on that count, but in an interesting way.
> 
> Both CloudSponge.php and Cloudsponge.php exist and are *not* deleted
> in the remote repository, but on OSX only Cloudsponge.php shows up on
> the filesystem, yet CloudSponge.php is being reported as modified.
> 
> Turns out two of our other developers are also seeing this behavior.

OK. Then it's not a bug[1], but rather an incompatibility issue. Your
repository stores two files which differ only in case, but your
underlying case-insensitive filesystem is incapable of storing both of
them simultaneously.

There's really no way around it except to either use a case-sensitive
filesystem, rename your files (or if one if obsolete, get rid of it).

[1] Arguably git could be better at noticing and reporting this issue,
but that wouldn't change the fundamental problem.

> I am seeing the same behavior with 1.7.7.4 which I backrevved to
> yesterday while troubleshooting this issue.  Can you suggest an older
> version for me to try next?

No, you'll see the same behavior in all versions of git (I was mostly
concerned that it was a regression new in v1.7.8, as I fixed some
case-sensitivity bugs recently).

> I'm not sure how I would git bisect in this case, I'd need to have all
> the different git revs installed in order to do that right? (I'm
> relatively new to git bisect, just figured it out the other day).

You can't bisect, because you don't have a version that actually worked.
But if you had, you would do it by cloning and building the git
repository itself, then starting a bisection like:

  git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
  git bisect start
  git bisect bad v1.7.8
  git bisect good v1.7.7.4 ;# if it had turned out to be OK

and then repeatedly build and try your test with each version of git,
until if finally narrowed it down to a single offending commit.

-Peff