Allow more than 255 character on a number of fields

Problem to solve

GitLab sets a limit of 255 characters on a large number of fields. Several of these fields could use a larger input.

Further details

As GitLab-EE users the 255-char limit impedes use of the following features:

• Push rules / Prohibited file names: there is clearly a use case to longer input when there are a large number of file names to reject.
• Group description: the limit prevents putting detailed description or long URLs.
• Project Tag names: long tags may be useful to store metadata about projects.

Proposal

Allow a much longer character limit for these fields, possibly using text columns rather than string. It seems it makes no difference to PostgreSQL, which implements them in the same way - but it would lift what appears like an arbitrary limitation on several fields that could use longer input.

MySQL might be a different story but MySQL is already not recommended with various issues and limitations.

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

Long input can be used in above fields.

Links / references