Are we certain that this change will fix that particular bug? Most of the files mentioned on that ticket contain special characters, but Aaron hasn't commented on the bug, so I don't know what reproduction/investigation path led to the conclusion that this change would fix this particular bug. Also, it would be good to know if there would be an alternative, smaller, fix to that particular issue. I.e. can we quickfix this and then take the necessary time to improve the sha-1 changeset after the bug has been fixed?
Mark, since you're our man on out-of-focus duty this week, it would be great if you can contribute by starting to write unit tests to complement that changeset:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/127460/ since my review feedback feedback was that it needs some in order to have some degree of confidence that merging this won't break more things than it fixes. This should be higher priority than the most recent GWToolset changesets by Dan pending review that are about introducing new features to GWToolset, which seem to be the majority of this week's out-of-focus work so far.