[Gnu-arch-users] Re: conversion of bitkeeper archive to tla

[Stefan Monnier]

> You'd have to go back in the list quite a bit (8-12 months), but there
> was a long discussion about the path length problem on the list. I
> believe the summary of the thread was that whats really called for is to
> convince the cygwin guys to use longer NT paths rather than the 256 char
> paths that are inherited from win9x.

I thought the conclusion was that Arch should really stop using silly
c/c--b/c--b--v paths and just use c/b/v instead.  After all, W32 is not the
only system where the limit can pose problems.  Most other systems have
higher limits, but if 256 is a serious problem, then a limit of 1024 (as
seem to be not uncommon in Unix systems) is clearly within reach.

Especially if someone say "screw that naming convention" and builds his own
structure within `c' (using - as a separator, for instance) so he can have
branch "a-b" and "a-b-c" and "a-b-c-d" which then turn into silly paths like
"a-b-c-d/a-b-c-d/a-b-c-d--0".  1024 chars / 6 give you about 150 chars for
the deepest "a-b-c-d" you can use before hitting the problem.

Unix tradition is to use fairly short file names, but I'd expect that on
MacOSX the 1024 limit could rear its ugly head at some point.


        Stefan