Re: Switching from CVS to GIT

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:45:02 -0400 (EDT)
>> From: Daniel Barkalow <address@hidden>
>> cc: Alex Riesen <address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden, 
>>     address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
>> 
>> I believe the hassle is that readdir doesn't necessarily report a README in 
>> a directory which is supposed to have a README, when it has a readme 
>> instead.
>
> Sorry I'm asking potentially stupid questions out of ignorance: why
> would you want readdir to return `README' when you have `readme'?
>
>> I think we want O(n) comparison of sorted lists, which doesn't 
>> work if equivalent names don't sort the same.
>
> You comparison function should be case-insensitive on Windows, or am
> I missing something?

Well, are "I" and "i" the same letters?  What about "İ" and "i"?  Or
"I" and "ı"?  What about Greek where uppercasing loses accents
(actually not unusual in literate French, either).  And what about
German ß and SS/SZ?

"case-insensitive" is a simple word, but the devil is in the details,
and that means basically requiring a system-provided sorting function.
And actually the _killer_ detail here is that git _must_ have the same
sorting order on every platform, since the order of files in a
directory tree affects its SHA-1 sum.  So a system-dependent sorting
order breaks git interoperability.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum