git-annex/doc/bugs/problems_with_utf8_names.mdwn
Joey Hess 5a50a7cf13 update unicode FilePath handling
Based on http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3307 ,
whether FilePath contains decoded unicode varies by OS.
So, add a configure check for it.

Also, renamed showFile to filePathToString
2011-02-11 15:37:37 -04:00

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There are problems with displaying filenames in UTF8 encoding, as shown here:
$ echo $LANG
en_GB.UTF-8
$ git init
$ git annex init test
[...]
$ touch "Umlaut Ü.txt"
$ git annex add Uml*
add Umlaut Ã.txt ok
(Recording state in git...)
$ find -name U\* | hexdump -C
00000000 2e 2f 55 6d 6c 61 75 74 20 c3 9c 2e 74 78 74 0a |./Umlaut ...txt.|
00000010
$ git annex find | hexdump -C
00000000 55 6d 6c 61 75 74 20 c3 83 c2 9c 2e 74 78 74 0a |Umlaut .....txt.|
00000010
$
It looks like the common latin1-to-UTF8 encoding. Functionality other than otuput seems not to be affected.
> Yes, I believe that git-annex is reading filename data from git
> as a stream of char8s, and not decoding unicode in it into logical
> characters.
> Haskell then I guess, tries to unicode encode it when it's output to
> the console.
> This only seems to matter WRT its output to the console; the data
> does not get mangled internally and so it accesses the right files
> under the hood.
>
> I am too new to haskell to really have a handle on how to handle
> unicode and other encodings issues with it. In general, there are three
> valid approaches: --[[Joey]]
>
> 1. Convert all input data to unicode and be unicode clean end-to-end
> internally. Problimatic here since filenames may not necessarily be
> encoded in utf-8 (an archive could have historical filenames using
> varying encodings), and you don't want which files are accessed to
> depend on locale settings.
> > I tried to do this by making parts of GitRepo call
> > Codec.Binary.UTF8.String.decodeString when reading filenames from
> > git. This seemed to break attempts to operate on the files,
> > weirdly encoded strings were seen in syscalls in strace.
> 1. Keep input and internal data un-decoded, but decode it when
> outputting a filename (assuming the filename is encoded using the
> user's configured encoding), and allow haskell's output encoding to then
> encode it according to the user's locale configuration.
> > This is now [[implemented|done]]. I'm not very happy that I have to watch
> > out for any place that a filename is output and call `filePathToString`
> > on it, but there are really not too many such places in git-annex.
> >
> > Note that this only affects filenames apparently.
> > (Names of files in the annex, and also some places where names
> > of keys are displayed.) Utf-8 in the uuid.map file etc seems
> > to be handled cleanly.
> 1. Avoid encodings entirely. Mostly what I'm doing now; probably
> could find a way to disable encoding of console output. Then the raw
> filename would be displayed, which should work ok. git-annex does
> not really need to pull apart filenames; they are almost entirely
> opaque blobs. I guess that the `--exclude` option is the exception
> to that, but it is currently not unicode safe anyway. (Update: tried
> `--exclude` again, seems it is unicode clean..)
> One other possible
> issue would be that this could cause problems if git-annex were
> translated.
----
Simpler test case:
<pre>
import Codec.Binary.UTF8.String
import System.Environment
main = do
args <- getArgs
let file = decodeString $ head args
putStrLn $ "file is: " ++ file
putStr =<< readFile file
</pre>
If I pass this a filename like 'ü', it will fail, and notice
the bad encoding of the filename in the error message:
<pre>
$ echo hi > ü; runghc foo.hs ü
file is: ü
foo.hs: <20>: openFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
</pre>
On the other hand, if I remove the decodeString, it prints the filename
wrong, while accessing it right:
<pre>
$ runghc foo.hs ü
file is: üa
hi
</pre>
The only way that seems to consistently work is to delay decoding the
filename to places where it's output. But then it's easy to miss some.