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Re: State of issue 2464 (Canonicalize / stringprep UTF-8 filenames to handle composed / decomposed differences shown by e.g. Mac OS X HFS+)

From: Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_elego.de>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2015 16:12:31 +0100

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 03:46:32PM +0100, Marc Strapetz wrote:
> Since SmartSVN has been switched from SVNKit to JavaHL (in version 8.5), we
> have a quite large amount of users complaining about problems with special
> characters in file names on Mac OSX.
>
> This is in particular a problem for SmartSVN, because SVNKit was
> automatically converting to composed form before storing a file in
> repository and decomposing automatically when writing to the file system.
> Hence, repositories and working copies which are working fine with version
> 8, suddenly start breaking with version 8.5.
>
> I understand that an all-embracing solution to issue 2464 is not trivial. On
> the other hand, there seem to be patches which are working quite well and
> which could solve mentioned issues when combined with a Subversion config
> option like "miscellany.autoComposeUTF8", so users have the choice whether
> *always* storing file names in composed or decomposed form in repository.
>
> Any ideas on this issue are appreciated.
>
> -Marc
>
>

I believe the most recent efforts related to this problem are on the
fsfs-ucsnorm branch. For more information, see
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/branches/fsfs-ucsnorm/BRANCH-README

Note that this branch has not been changed in about a year. I'm not sure why.
I wasn't involved in this branch. Perhaps others can explain the roadblocks
encountered. (Some technical issue? Lack of time or motivation?)

I think the best you could do is try to actively drive further development
efforts targeted at fixing this problem. Re-opening the discussion here is
a good start. Not letting the discussion die unresolved is important.
Contributing concrete suggestions or perhaps code to the existing attempts
on the branch would be even better.

The patches attached to issue 2464 are not acceptable because they break
compatibility with existing repositories. This has been reiterated many
many times. The fact that several Mac users keep applying this patch does
not mean it is endorsed as a solution. It is at best a crude workaround
that might even conflict with an actual fix, once implemented.
Received on 2015-03-16 16:13:27 CET

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