git checkout error: unable to create file

Question

While cloning a git repository from Linux to a Windows system, I am getting the following error in checkout the phase:

$ git clone gituser@serveraddr:/git/git_repo.git git_WA
Cloning into 'git_WA'...
gituser@serveraddr's password:
remote: Counting objects: 500846, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (118676/118676), done.
remote: Total 500846 (delta 307739), reused 483023 (delta 291136)
Receiving objects: 100% (500846/500846), 907.54 MiB | 9.04 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (307739/307739), done.

error: unable to create file RealR**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************validation.xml (No such file or directory)
Checking out files: 100% (441329/441329)
Checking out files: 100% (441329/441329), done.
done.

Case-2: Cloned as bare repo, checked-out all from bare repo locally => Same error.

Case-3: Clone the repo in C:\ directly, checkout successful, No error.

-> It looks like problem with filename/filepath length limitation.

Case-4: checkout the same files from SVN repo. Able to checkout at any location without any problem. Hence no problem from windows side. (Yes, l have data in SVN and GIT both, I just migrated from SVN to GIT).

Hence, the problem has to be within msysgit, some filepath length limitation. Can path length in gitclient/msysgit be tweaked?

Edit1: All operation tried with TortoiseGIT client v1.8.0 and git-bash: git version 1.8.0.msysgit.0.
Edit2: Added the actual command used while cloning.

Answer 1

I experienced similar problems when checking out a project into a Windows directory that had a 67- (Windows) or 76- (cygwin) character base path - when added to the path-length of the checked out files, it exceeded Windows' path-length limit:

git checkout -f HEAD error: unable to create file <194-character filepath> (No such file or directory) fatal: cannot create directory at '<187-character directory path>': No such file or directory 

I solved the problem by checking out the git repository to c:\git, which, at 6 or 15 characters in length, kept the maximum path-length under the Windows limit.

Answer 2

Try:

git config --system core.longpaths true 

This will allow it to checkout the files even with longer filepaths. The issue with this would be when you try to delete it, as Windows will not allow to delete a path longer than it's allowed threshold. The workaround to that is to rename the folders in the local repository, so that the overall length of the path is lessened. For example, a path that is alpha/beta/gamma/universe.txt, can be limited to 1/2/3/universe.txt, so that it's length is under the windows filesize threshold.