Re: git and filesystem problems (ext3 and vfat)

["David Tweed" <david.tweed@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Ian Brown <ianbrn@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, ]
>
>  I have a diskOnKey which has a vfat filesystem.
> I ran there:
> git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-2.6.git
> the I copied all the wireless-2.6 folder to an ext3 partition.
> There I ran git diff.
>
> I get many messages like these (probably on all files of the repository):
>
> diff --git a/COPYING b/COPYING
> deleted file mode 100644
> index ca442d3..0000000
> --- a/COPYING
> +++ /dev/null
> @@ -1,356 +0,0 @@
> -
>
> and then all the lines of the file with "-" in the beginning, as if
> they are empty.

The first question is what do the directories on the vfat and ext3
disks look like? Are the files like COPYING present in both directory
trees (so git is wrong at that point of the diff) or has something
gone wrong earlier?

> Why is it so ?
> Is there any way to overcome it ?
> Must I run "git clone" on an ext3 DiskOnKey only ?

I have certainly cloned onto a vfat partition with no problems,
although I've always done it with a --bare clone because a lot of my
repos have had case sensitive filenames and I've had some problems
with the "git dirent reading code reads back different case file names
than it wrote out and gets confused". If you're only transporting the
repo on the stick, I'd definitely do it via "git clone --bare" just to
reduce the potential for problems.

-- 
cheers, dave tweed__________________________
david.tweed@gmail.com
Rm 124, School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading.
"while having code so boring anyone can maintain it, use Python." --
attempted insult seen on slashdot