[PLUG] case-sensitive cvs on Mac OS X

[Paul Heinlein]

Here's an obscure one I figured I ought to post for Google's sake:

Macintoshes historically have had case-insensitive filesystems. That 
remains the default with OS X, but you can create case-sensitive 
filesystems, if you so choose. (The Mac mailing lists are full of funny 
posts asking why anyone would case about case sensitivity. Well, they're 
funny to me anyway. :-)

Our main file server at work is an Xserve; the system disk is formatted 
in normal Mac fashion, but the export volume is case-sensitive. So, if 
you login to that box, $HOME is case-sensitive, but /var/tmp is not.

Local requirements recently led me to compile and install a newer 
version of cvs than ships with 10.3.9. Lacking any firm direction in the 
matter, the cvs configure script automagically decides whether or not to 
build a case-sensitive binary based on the build-time filesystem. I 
built cvs in /var/tmp, so the binary was case-insensitive, but the 
repository is on the exported, case-sensitive filesystem. Oy!

The bottom line: When building cvs on OS X systems, make sure you know 
which sort of filesystem will be holding your repositories. Either build 
it on the target filesystem or make sure you know whether to pass the 
--enable-case-sensitivity (or --disable-case-sensitivity) option to the 
configure script.

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com