From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: git on MacOSX and files with decomposed utf-8 file names Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:35:19 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: References: <478E1FED.5010801@web.de> <65026F2B-5CE8-4238-A9AB-D3545D336B41@sb.org> <200801162251.54219.jnareb@gmail.com> <1574A90A-8C45-46AD-9402-34AE6F582B3F@sb.org> <7652B11D-9B9F-45EA-9465-8294B701FE7C@sb.org> <8AC4CC86-A711-483D-9F9C-5F8497006A1D@sb.org> <478F99E7.1050503@web.de> <9BA6785F-A715-4F5C-B192-96471243FE20@sb.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Pedro Melo , Mark Junker , "git@vger.kernel.org" To: Kevin Ballard X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Jan 18 01:35:59 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1JFfDC-0003Dq-3r for gcvg-git-2@gmane.org; Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:35:58 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757935AbYARAf1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:35:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757803AbYARAf1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:35:27 -0500 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:47788 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757630AbYARAf0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:35:26 -0500 Received: from imap1.linux-foundation.org (imap1.linux-foundation.org [207.189.120.55]) by smtp2.linux-foundation.org (8.13.5.20060308/8.13.5/Debian-3ubuntu1.1) with ESMTP id m0I0ZK4v007171 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:35:21 -0800 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by imap1.linux-foundation.org (8.13.5.20060308/8.13.5/Debian-3ubuntu1.1) with ESMTP id m0I0ZJHT022319; Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:35:19 -0800 In-Reply-To: <9BA6785F-A715-4F5C-B192-96471243FE20@sb.org> User-Agent: Alpine 1.00 (LFD 882 2007-12-20) X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.716 required=5 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.0-osdl_revision__1.47__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: lf$Revision: 1.188 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.53 on 207.189.120.14 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Kevin Ballard wrote: > > I just don't understand why you insist that the filename is data, when it is > clearly metadata. Uhh. And exactly how do you know the difference, and why should it matter? A lot of data is metadata. Look at the git index file. It's *all* metadata. Does that mean that the OS has the right to corrupt it? IOW, why do you seem to argue that metadata something you can corrupt, but not then "regular" data? Why is it ok to change a filename, when that same filename may *also* be encoded by the user in a regular data file (think about MD5SUM files, for example, that include the pathname, but now the pathname is part of the file data, not on a filesystem). So filenames are data, they're metadata, they're whatever. None of that means that it's acceptable to corrupt them, or gives the OS any reason to say that it "knows better" than the user in how users use them. It's still the *users* metadata, not the filesystems own metadata! In many cases, users use filenames *as* data, ie the filename actually has a meaning in itself, not just as a handle to get the file contents. If this was truly metadata that isn't visible to the user, and not under the users control (ie indirect block numbers etc), then you'd have a good point. At that point, it's obviously entirely up to the filesystem how the heck it encodes it. But that's not what filenames are. Filenames are an index specified by the user, not by the computer. Linus