From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on dcvr.yhbt.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-ASN: AS31976 209.132.180.0/23 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.2 required=3.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI shortcircuit=no autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by dcvr.yhbt.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78BEC1F87F for ; Wed, 21 Nov 2018 12:37:03 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1730433AbeKUXLN (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Nov 2018 18:11:13 -0500 Received: from smtprelay01.ispgateway.de ([80.67.31.35]:57880 "EHLO smtprelay01.ispgateway.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1728428AbeKUXLN (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Nov 2018 18:11:13 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 11637 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Wed, 21 Nov 2018 18:11:13 EST Received: from [91.113.179.170] (helo=[192.168.92.26]) by smtprelay01.ispgateway.de with esmtpsa (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:128) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1gPOjM-0005uB-5c for git@vger.kernel.org; Wed, 21 Nov 2018 10:23:32 +0100 From: Marc Strapetz Subject: pathspec: problems with too long command line To: git@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2018 10:23:34 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.3.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Df-Sender: bWFyYy5zdHJhcGV0ekBzeW50ZXZvLmNvbQ== Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org From our GUI client we are invoking git operations on a possibly large set of files. This may result in pathspecs which are exceeding the maximum command line length, especially on Windows [1] and OSX [2]. To workaround this problem we are currently splitting up such operations by invoking multiple git commands. This works well for some commands (like add), but doesn't work well for others (like commit). A possible solution could be to add another patchspec magic word which will read paths from a file instead of command line. A similar approach can be found in Mercurial with its "listfile:" pattern [3]. Does that sound reasonable? If so, we should be able to provide a corresponding patch. -Marc [1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031210-00/?p=41553/ [2] https://serverfault.com/questions/69430 [3] https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/help/patterns