clone fails on macOS (case-insensitive filesystem) for _forks_ of repositories with case-folding collisions in tags #12328
Description
Describe the bug
error: You're on a case-insensitive filesystem, and the remote you are
trying to fetch from has references that only differ in casing. It
is impossible to store such references with the 'files' backend. You
can either accept this as-is, in which case you won't be able to
store all remote references on disk. Or you can alternatively
migrate your repository to use the 'reftable' backend with the
following command:
git refs migrate --ref-format=reftable
Please keep in mind that not all implementations of Git support this
new format yet. So if you use tools other than Git to access this
repository it may not be an option to migrate to reftables.
failed to run git: exit status 1
Affected version
gh version 2.83.2 (2025-12-10)
https://github.com/cli/cli/releases/tag/v2.83.2
Steps to reproduce the behavior
-
Type this
gh repo clone check-spelling-sandbox/runner-images-broken-tags-fork broken -
View the output
-
See error
-
Type this
gh repo clone check-spelling-sandbox/runner-images-broken-tags confusing -
View the output
-
Don't see the error
Expected vs actual behavior
For broken you see:
* [new branch] main -> upstream/main
* [new tag] macOS-13/20230419.1 -> macOS-13/20230419.1
* [new tag] macos-10.15/20200806.4 -> macos-10.15/20200806.4
* [new tag] macos-10.15/20200819.1 -> macos-10.15/20200819.1
* [new tag] macos-10.15/20200825.1 -> macos-10.15/20200825.1
* [new tag] macos-10.15/20200829.1 -> macos-10.15/20200829.1
* [new tag] macos-10.15/20200903.1 -> macos-10.15/20200903.1
* [new tag] macos-13-arm64/20230924.3 -> macos-13-arm64/20230924.3
* [new tag] macos-13-arm64/20240728.2 -> macos-13-arm64/20240728.2
* [new tag] macos-13-arm64/20241021.263 -> macos-13-arm64/20241021.263
* [new tag] macos-13/20230419.1 -> macos-13/20230419.1
...followed by:
error: You're on a case-insensitive filesystem, and the remote you are
trying to fetch from has references that only differ in casing. It
is impossible to store such references with the 'files' backend. You
can either accept this as-is, in which case you won't be able to
store all remote references on disk. Or you can alternatively
migrate your repository to use the 'reftable' backend with the
following command:
git refs migrate --ref-format=reftable
Please keep in mind that not all implementations of Git support this
new format yet. So if you use tools other than Git to access this
repository it may not be an option to migrate to reftables.
failed to run git: exit status 1For confusing, you see:
Cloning into 'confusing'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 55579, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (198/198), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (138/138), done.
remote: Total 55579 (delta 152), reused 60 (delta 60), pack-reused 55381 (from 4)
Receiving objects: 100% (55579/55579), 14.32 MiB | 12.80 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (37909/37909), done.Logs
Paste the activity from your command line. Redact if needed.
Notes
- There was absolutely no good reason for the actions/runner-images to have both
macOS-13/20230419.1andmacos-13/20230419.1, but it did until The presence of themacOS-13/20230419.1makesgh repo clone ...for forks of this repository die horribly actions/runner-images#13451 (comment). - https://github.com/check-spelling-sandbox/runner-images-broken-tags-fork/branches has 1 item (the default branch)
- https://github.com/check-spelling-sandbox/runner-images-broken-tags-fork/tags has 0 items