Here was the problem:
1. When determining whether a given blob is viewable text, gitlab_git reads the first 1024 bytes and checks with Linguist whether it is a text or binary file.
2. If the blob is text, GitLab will attempt to display it.
3. However, if the text has binary characters after the first 1024 bytes, then GitLab will attempt to load the entire contents, but the encoding will be ASCII-8BIT since there are binary characters.
4. The Error 500 results when GitLab attempts to display a mix UTF-8 and ASCII-8BIT.
To fix this, we load as much data as we are willing to display so that the detection will work properly. Requires
an update to gitlab_git: gitlab-org/gitlab_git!86
Closes#13826
This allows us to take advantage of Rails' `to_partial_path` to render
the correct partial based on the Blob type, rather than cluttering the
view with conditionals.
It also allows (and will allow in the future) better encapsulation for
Blob-related logic which makes sense for our Rails app but might not
make as much sense for the core `gitlab_git` library, such as detecting
if the blob is an SVG.
Stan Hu