Re: Redefining the maximum path length [Fwd: Re: [GNUnet-developers] using $TMPDIR instead of /tmp]

[Leo Famulari]

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 06:59:23PM +0000, Nils Gillmann wrote:
> we did some changes in GNUnet where my part of the job reminded me again
> of the path length Linux has as default.
> 
> I know there's at least (only?) 1 file in the Linux kernel which defines
> the path length. Where else would we need to apply changes as a distro?
> 
> I think if there are really no serious implications of extending the length,
> we should make the path longer. Not just for GNUnet. To avoid future 
> annoyance.
> 
> What do you think? And if you are against it, what should I look into
> that supports keeping the arbitrary short number we have now?

If we are interested in discussing this change, we need some more
information for the discussion to be fruitful.

Specifically, we need to know how the path limit is set and used in the
Linux source code [0]. From there, we will be more able to evaluate the
feasibility and impact of the change.

This will also help us to understand why the limit exists. Perhaps the
limitation is required by Linux across the full set of platforms (libc
and filesystems) it aims to support, but not for the platforms supported
by Guix.

Finally, it will be helpful for the rest of guix-devel to understand why
we'd want to make this change. So far, the path length limit 
of 4096 characters seems long enough for us...

[0] My understanding is that the PATH_MAX macro from limits.h sets a
4096 "character" limit.

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