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From: "Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com>
To: git@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>,
	Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>,
	Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
Subject: [PATCH v2 4/5] strbuf_readlink(): support link targets that exceed 2*PATH_MAX
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:05:08 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <accb6d5f0aef9ab5de6da8e9d08ad59a19ef5157.1767989109.git.gitgitgadget@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <pull.2017.v2.git.1767989109.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

From: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>

The `strbuf_readlink()` function refuses to read link targets that
exceed 2*PATH_MAX (even if a sufficient size was specified by the
caller).

The reason that that limit is 2*PATH_MAX instead of PATH_MAX is that
the symlink targets do not need to be normalized. After running
`ln -s a/../a/../a/../a/../b c`, the target of the symlink `c` will not
be normalized to `b` but instead be much longer. As such, symlink
targets' lengths can far exceed PATH_MAX.

They are frequently much longer than 2*PATH_MAX on Windows, which
actually supports paths up to 32,767 characters, but sets PATH_MAX to
260 for backwards compatibility. For full details, see
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation

Let's just hard-code the limit used by `strbuf_readlink()` to 32,767 and
make it independent of the current platform's PATH_MAX.

Based-on-a-patch-by: Karsten Blees <karsten.blees@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
---
 strbuf.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/strbuf.c b/strbuf.c
index 44a8f6a554..ec2b7afbe6 100644
--- a/strbuf.c
+++ b/strbuf.c
@@ -566,7 +566,7 @@ ssize_t strbuf_write(struct strbuf *sb, FILE *f)
 	return sb->len ? fwrite(sb->buf, 1, sb->len, f) : 0;
 }
 
-#define STRBUF_MAXLINK (2*PATH_MAX)
+#define STRBUF_MAXLINK (32767)
 
 int strbuf_readlink(struct strbuf *sb, const char *path, size_t hint)
 {
-- 
gitgitgadget


  parent reply	other threads:[~2026-01-09 20:05 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-12-16 15:33 [PATCH 0/5] Last preparations before upstreaming Git for Windows' symlink support Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget
2025-12-16 15:33 ` [PATCH 1/5] mingw: do resolve symlinks in `getcwd()` Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget
2025-12-17 14:44   ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-12-16 15:33 ` [PATCH 2/5] init: do parse _all_ core.* settings early Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget
2025-12-17 14:44   ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-12-16 15:33 ` [PATCH 3/5] strbuf_readlink(): avoid calling `readlink()` twice in corner-cases Karsten Blees via GitGitGadget
2025-12-16 15:33 ` [PATCH 4/5] strbuf_readlink(): support link targets that exceed PATH_MAX Karsten Blees via GitGitGadget
2025-12-17 14:44   ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-12-19  8:50     ` Johannes Schindelin
2025-12-19 11:51       ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-12-30  5:00         ` Junio C Hamano
2025-12-17 23:39   ` Junio C Hamano
2025-12-16 15:33 ` [PATCH 5/5] trim_last_path_component(): avoid hard-coding the directory separator Karsten Blees via GitGitGadget
2026-01-09 20:05 ` [PATCH v2 0/5] Last preparations before upstreaming Git for Windows' symlink support Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget
2026-01-09 20:05   ` [PATCH v2 1/5] mingw: do resolve symlinks in `getcwd()` Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget
2026-01-09 20:05   ` [PATCH v2 2/5] init: do parse _all_ core.* settings early Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget
2026-01-09 20:05   ` [PATCH v2 3/5] strbuf_readlink(): avoid calling `readlink()` twice in corner-cases Karsten Blees via GitGitGadget
2026-01-09 20:05   ` Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget [this message]
2026-01-09 20:05   ` [PATCH v2 5/5] trim_last_path_component(): avoid hard-coding the directory separator Karsten Blees via GitGitGadget
2026-01-11  4:04   ` [PATCH v2 0/5] Last preparations before upstreaming Git for Windows' symlink support Junio C Hamano
2026-01-12  8:35   ` Patrick Steinhardt

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