git has issues with international characters in branch names

git has issues with international characters in branch names

[Ax Da]

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The documentation doesn't seem to be clear about which characters are allowed as branch names.

We have been using umlauts and apostrophes in our branch names, and both are having issues:

- apostrophe:
  git removes the apostrophes from the branch name when creating/pushing a branch.
  In our TFS server repository we're having the same branch name twice: Once with apostrophes,
  and once without. And I don't seem to be able to delete the one without apostrophes.

- umlauts:
  The umlauts are not correctly interpreted when SMB is used. "gemäss" becomes "gem<C3><A4>ss".
  (See images attached.)

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Re: git has issues with international characters in branch names

[brian m. carlson]

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On Sun, May 05, 2019 at 12:27:31PM +0200, Ax Da wrote:
> The documentation doesn't seem to be clear about which characters are allowed as branch names.
> 
> We have been using umlauts and apostrophes in our branch names, and both are having issues:
> 
> - apostrophe:
>   git removes the apostrophes from the branch name when creating/pushing a branch.
>   In our TFS server repository we're having the same branch name twice: Once with apostrophes,
>   and once without. And I don't seem to be able to delete the one without apostrophes.
> 
> - umlauts:
>   The umlauts are not correctly interpreted when SMB is used. "gemäss" becomes "gem<C3><A4>ss".
>   (See images attached.)

I don't think Git itself has a problem with Unicode. I literally just
the other day created a branch with a Unicode apostrophe and pushed it
to GitHub successfully using macOS. It is possible that TFS doesn't like
them; that depends on the hosting solution you use. If you're seeing
problems with TFS, I'd reach out to Microsoft for assistance.

It looks also like the Git CMD interface isn't rendering them properly.
I would try using Git Bash instead, and if that doesn't work, please
report that to Git for Windows. The folks there will have a better idea
about the portability issue that's occurring; I expect there's a wart
there somewhere between UTF-8 and UTF-16. It may also be that SMB is not
a good choice for sharing repositories if you require
internationalization, or you may need to change the character set your
SMB server uses.

You may also, depending on which version of Windows you are using, have
better luck at the command line with Windows Subsystem for Linux.
-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204

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Re: git has issues with international characters in branch names

[Jacob Keller]

On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 11:16 AM brian m. carlson
<sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, May 05, 2019 at 12:27:31PM +0200, Ax Da wrote:
> > The documentation doesn't seem to be clear about which characters are allowed as branch names.
> >
> > We have been using umlauts and apostrophes in our branch names, and both are having issues:
> >
> > - apostrophe:
> >   git removes the apostrophes from the branch name when creating/pushing a branch.
> >   In our TFS server repository we're having the same branch name twice: Once with apostrophes,
> >   and once without. And I don't seem to be able to delete the one without apostrophes.
> >
> > - umlauts:
> >   The umlauts are not correctly interpreted when SMB is used. "gemäss" becomes "gem<C3><A4>ss".
> >   (See images attached.)
>
> I don't think Git itself has a problem with Unicode. I literally just
> the other day created a branch with a Unicode apostrophe and pushed it
> to GitHub successfully using macOS. It is possible that TFS doesn't like
> them; that depends on the hosting solution you use. If you're seeing
> problems with TFS, I'd reach out to Microsoft for assistance.
>
> It looks also like the Git CMD interface isn't rendering them properly.
> I would try using Git Bash instead, and if that doesn't work, please
> report that to Git for Windows. The folks there will have a better idea
> about the portability issue that's occurring; I expect there's a wart
> there somewhere between UTF-8 and UTF-16. It may also be that SMB is not
> a good choice for sharing repositories if you require
> internationalization, or you may need to change the character set your
> SMB server uses.

In my experience, the regular command prompt will have significant
troubles displaying UTF-8 characters.

I had better luck in Git Bash, but I don't recall if I had to do
something for it.

Thanks,
Jake

>
> You may also, depending on which version of Windows you are using, have
> better luck at the command line with Windows Subsystem for Linux.
> --
> brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
> OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204