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I want to understand what is maximum allowed size of a git branch name.
I am trying to create some long names (as an experiment) so a name with 370 characters was valid, but 380 characters gave me fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: File name too long
So the questions is: what is the maximum number of characters that can be in git branch name? Does it depend on the system? Is it possible to create long branch name in a repository that will be rejected on remote repository (i.e. Github)?
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One key rule is the length of life of the branch before it gets merged and deleted. Simply put, the branch should only last a couple of days. Any longer than two days, and there is a risk of the branch becoming a long-lived feature branch (the antithesis of trunk-based development).
Most conventions recommend leading the branch name with prefixes like hotfix- , feature- , chore- , or some other variant of the categorization of tasks. Practically, if you are using an issue tracker, you're tagging the category of the task in the issue tracker anyway — in addition to much more additional context.
Creating a New Branch In Git, the git branch branch-name command is used to create a new branch called branch-name . Branches should be named something that describes the purpose of the branch. Note that branch names can't contain whitespace: new-feature and new_feature are valid branch names, but new feature is not.
The 'File name too long' is indeed an error coming from your system. It is not a restriction in Git. I don't think there's a way of testing the maximum branch name lengths of other systems, like GitHub's, without experimenting - although I don't see why you would want to know...
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Source: the error mentioned is thrown on line 291 of branch.c. "File name too long" is the standard description for the ENAMETOOLONG error.
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