[darcs-users] Huge mess moving to mac

[Max Battcher]

On 4/16/07, Yitzchak Gale <gale at sefer.org> wrote:
> > Generally?  We yell at project maintainers that are too
> > lazy to watch for case-sensitivity issues.
>
> <flame-response type="so there!">
>
> Well, if we are being judgemental, we actually should
> yell at project managers who don't use the most
> natural file names. Unless there is a very good reason -
> such as knowing that the project might someday
> be added to a darcs repo, AND that the darcs repo might
> then someday be replicated onto a machine that is
> running a brain-dead OS, AND that darcs does not
> yet handle this problem.
>
> </flame-response></flame>

I didn't mean for the original response to sound so flame-like.  I
realize that sometimes people have other opinions but I certainly
don't see case-dependent file names as "natural".  In fact, the
linguaphile in me wants to scream how unnatural it is.  There's no
difference in lowercase/uppercase in speech.  Personally, I've yet to
see good usage of case-dependent filenames.  I realize sometimes a
project might have useful naming convention that use it, but a naming
convention is a convention of choice and there are certainly other
qualifiers beyond casing that work just as well...

There's a reason that two major Operating Systems (Windows and Mac),
regardless of how "brain dead" you think they are (and we could argue
that for a while), both have made the choice (historically) to avoid
case-sensitive file names.

> Anyway, I guess what you're saying is that there
> really isn't any easy way around this problem
> on Windows. And although there is a pretty good
> work-around on MacOS, it is still a work-around.

No, I mentioned several "easy" alternatives in Windows (very similar
to and just as hack-like as those on the Mac): use a Unix
box/partition/vm (all three are easy enough, and the third is even
officially supported by Microsoft now) or use a management tool like
cygwin (if you can stand it).

A further alternative, that I almost forgot, is to make use of
Microsoft's Windows Services For Unix and its POSIX libraries for case
sensitive file operations.  Although, the Windows API and just about
every Windows application around will barf at differently cased files.
 (Windows has no low-level technical requirements against case
sensitivity, it merely sticks to insensitivity as a convention.)

-- 
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net/