On 9/17/24 12:28, Iago Bonnici via R-devel wrote:
Hello @r-devel,
From what I read in the following thread:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-package-devel/2023q4/010197.html
The major reason to limit paths lengths in R packages is to help
support MS Windows 260-chars paths lengths limit (pre-W10).
Not really, the limit on Windows is a reason why path length is a scarce
resource in portable applications. And it exists also on Windows 10 and
newer - it is a limitation now in Windows applications, inherited by a
limit in early versions of Windows operating system. R itself doesn't
have this limitation anymore.
However, the official documentation at this address:
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Package-structure-1
States:
> /packages are normally distributed as tarballs, and these have a
limit on path lengths: for maximal portability 100 bytes.
/ This is the wrong explanation. Tar has been supporting 256-chars
paths since POSIX.1-1988 and unlimited paths since POSIX.1-2001. The
limitation should be deferred to MS Windows instead of tar.
Considering that the manuals are « /edited by the R Development
Core Team /» <https://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html>, I suppose that
this is the right list to point out this inconsistency? How can I help
in fixing this? Should I open a bug at R Bugzilla?
Note: I am not discussing whether the limit itself should be
reconsidered. That discussion seems yet covered by the aforementioned
thread (but it's non-official), and by bug #18637
<https://bugs.r-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18637> (but it's stale). In
any case, I think there is no blocker to clarifying the situation in the
documentation.
I have added a sentence to R-exts mentioning Windows is also a reason
why it makes sense to keep paths short.
Best
Tomas
Best regards,
--
Iago-lito
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