Re: [Bug-tar] Re: AMTAR brokenness

[Roger Leigh <roger at whinlatter dot uklinux dot net>]

Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us> writes:

> Is there a reason to allow file names longer than 99 characters in a
> package?  Clearly this is non-portable.  Why not enforce a maximum
> file name length of 99 characters in Automake?

I experience the breakage when using Doxygen to generate a reference
manual from C++ code.  Some of the filenames it generates are over 80
chars, due to using namespaces, and long classnames etc.  If the path
is called libfoobar-baz-12.32.44/doc/libfoobar-baz/html/., that's an
extra 46 chars in the path.  The 99 char limit has been comfortably
exceeded, and I had no control over this!

[There are options to produce mangled 8.3 names, but I want them to be
human readable.]

> One way to enforce this is to use sed to truncate file names longer
> than 99 characters before passing them to tar so that tar
> complains/fails during 'make dist'.

What if the truncated names already exist?  You will then silently
produce a broken archive.  Better to do

  find . | wc -L

to get an accurate figure, and then bail out.

I'm using the patch I posted.  If and when anyone complains, I'll
instruct them to build and install the latest GNU tar (or build it for
them).  I require the functionality for long pathnames, and I don't
want to have to support broken tools.  For my needs, 99 chars is not
at all sufficient.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh

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