What DVCS support Unicode filenames?

Question

I'm interested in trying out distributed version control systems. git sounds promising, but I saw a note somewhere for the Windows port of git that says "don't use non-ASCII filenames". I can't find that now, but there is this link. It's put me off git for now, but I don't know if the other options are any better.

Support for non-ASCII filenames is essential for my Japanese company. I'm looking for one that internally stores filenames as Unicode, not a platform-dependent encoding which would cause endless grief. So:

1. What DVCS support Unicode filenames?
2. In both Windows and Linux?
3. Ideally, with the possibility to transfer repositories between Windows and Linux machines with minimal issues?

Answer 1

See issue 80 in the same repository. There is a recent (mar/apr) discussion on the Git Mailing list (e.g. 1, 2) where the Git maintainer Junio Hamano asks some questions regarding this. I don't have it right here. By joining the thread in a constructive manner you might help in resolving the issue.

In the Java implementation JGit, we always use UTF-8 when we create textual metadata and filenames. That is the only way, but there are some things to consider.

Answer 2

Bazaar VCS works with unicode filenames internally. And it has very good support for unicode both on Linux and Windows.

Answer 3

Mercurial

On Linux, I think Mercurial just encodes in whatever is the system's encoding (correct me if I'm wrong). So best to set Linux up for UTF-8 for cross-platform compatibility. This is the default for many modern distributions.

On Windows, Mercurial (due to Python's byte string handling) uses the system code page. This just about guarantees bad cross-platform interoperation for non-ASCII characters.

fixutf8 Extension for Windows

There is an externally-created Mercurial extension called fixutf8 for Windows which properly handles all Unicode characters (even those outside the current code page) and encodes the filenames as UTF-8 in the Mercurial repository. It thus enables interoperation with Linux as long as Linux is using the UTF-8 encoding. I tried enabling it on my Windows set-up last week, and had a couple of problems with installation. Since then, one problem has been fixed. Now the only issue is that the binary Mercurial distributions are built with Python 2.4, while fixutf8 requires Mercurial to be built with Python 2.5 or higher to load fixutf8. I expect this will be resolved in the near future.

Answer 4

The msysgit project is busy fixing UTF-8 support for Git on Windows. It might be fixed in the next release.

Answer 5

According to this page: Bazaar, Codendi, CVSNT, Monotone, Perforce, Rational Team Concert, Subversion, Surround SCM, Synergy. But there are lots of 'Unknowns' on that page.