bug#51497: 29.0.50; (vc-print-log) broken over TRAMP

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 31.10.2021 09:58, Dima Kogan wrote:
> Note the :(literal) stuff. This is what was added in the commit that the
> bisection found to be the cause of the issue. I can try to run this
> command directly (outside of emacs) on the target box:
>
>    $ git --no-pager ls-files -c -z -- ':(literal)FILE.c' </dev/null
>
>    fatal: Invalid pathspec magic 'literal' in ':(literal)FILE.c'
>
> The issue is that this target box has a version of git too old to know
> about :(literal):
>
>    kogan@aargh:~/stereo-server$ git --version
>    git version 1.8.3.1

Sounds like CentOS 7. Released 7 years ago, but updated last year, even.

> Yeah, it's ancient, but I don't control this particular machine, and I
> don't think basic stuff like "C-x v l" should be non-functional here.
> Can we add some logic to emacs to not hard-depend on this stuff?

Any idea which version of Git introduced literal pathspecs?

The docs on the official website only go back to 2.1.4 (also from 2014), 
which had it already.

Anyway, with Michael's code, see the attached patch you can try.

no-literal-pathspecs-on-centos.diff
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