]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/git.git/commit
strbuf_readlink(): support link targets that exceed 2*PATH_MAX
authorJohannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
Fri, 9 Jan 2026 20:05:08 +0000 (20:05 +0000)
committerJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Sat, 10 Jan 2026 02:28:36 +0000 (18:28 -0800)
commit21f368daab677724ca1a200c22d65b64b15117b5
treefa3dad50e4f4d41bced646bbe86327ee42771d75
parent0fcbb57f970f318df422ca756a269651885576b9
strbuf_readlink(): support link targets that exceed 2*PATH_MAX

The `strbuf_readlink()` function refuses to read link targets that
exceed 2*PATH_MAX (even if a sufficient size was specified by the
caller).

The reason that that limit is 2*PATH_MAX instead of PATH_MAX is that
the symlink targets do not need to be normalized. After running
`ln -s a/../a/../a/../a/../b c`, the target of the symlink `c` will not
be normalized to `b` but instead be much longer. As such, symlink
targets' lengths can far exceed PATH_MAX.

They are frequently much longer than 2*PATH_MAX on Windows, which
actually supports paths up to 32,767 characters, but sets PATH_MAX to
260 for backwards compatibility. For full details, see
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation

Let's just hard-code the limit used by `strbuf_readlink()` to 32,767 and
make it independent of the current platform's PATH_MAX.

Based-on-a-patch-by: Karsten Blees <karsten.blees@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
strbuf.c