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btrfs / btrfs-todo

An issues only repo to organize our TODO items
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Please add a file attribute or mount option for case insensitivity... #44

Open piedrok opened 1 year ago

piedrok commented 1 year ago

Hi!

With ext4 there is the file attribute "+F" which adds case insensitivity to a folder and the containing files. BTRFS doesn't have any option like this...

For cross platform tasks there are many use cases for which case folding is desirable or in some cases even necessary.

My suggestion would be to have this as attribute like on etx4 or as a mount option for a subvolume - or even both?

As it is now, I for example have to use a loop device formatted as ext4, prepared with "chattr +F", as a collection folder that gets input from different file sets send to me by people working on different platforms...

Well, I don't think I have to convince anybody that a case insensitive option would be a useful addition - so I hope this can be added to the todo list!

thanks for reading, pk

Thanks for reading

MarkRose commented 10 months ago

There are patches and some discussion about this on the mailing list: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-bcachefs/20230812145017.259609-4-joshua@froggi.es/T/#u

kakra commented 10 months ago

There are patches and some discussion about this on the mailing list

But that's for bcachefs.

devZer0 commented 6 months ago

For cross platform tasks there are many use cases for which case folding is desirable or in some cases even necessary.

just for my curiosity - where is that needed or for what ?

Atemu commented 6 months ago

People run Windows applications through WINE which sometimes assume case insensitivity.

The SteamDeck uses ext4 with case folding by default for this reason.

piedrok commented 6 months ago

@Atemu: Exactly!

Also Steam Workshop Mods are mainly created with Windows in mind.

So mods - even for native linux games! - subscribed to through the Steam workshop will often fail to work.

Though using a case insensitive folder or file system for the same game's mod installation folder often makes the mods and mod update subscription work flawlessly!

Also this improves compatibility for shared folders or partitions between Linux and Windows users. (E.g. via WinBtrfs which claims to have a working "Windows10 case sensitivity flag"...)

It's useful to have the option "case folding" for folders or partitions!

adrianinsaval commented 5 months ago

I also have a need for this and it's not related to gaming, I got my hands on a very good maintenance manual for my car but unfortunately it's in the form of a webpage that was designed to be hosted on windows. Whoever was the idiot that made it did not pay attention to cases and when following links it constantly tries to go to an nonexistent file because the case is different.

piedrok commented 5 months ago

Importing web projects is a nightmare without case insensitivity!

The same is true for backups that have been saved and moved around on different systems. Recovering those file structures gets much easier if case folding can be enabled on some folders - and be it temporarily...