Long Geronimo path and file names cause problems on Windows
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         Key: GERONIMO-1790
         URL: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GERONIMO-1790
     Project: Geronimo
        Type: Bug
  Components: general  
    Versions: 1.2    
 Environment: Windows of various flavors
    Reporter: Joe Bohn


The long path and file names causes a problem for windows users because by 
default windows typically only allows paths of 256 bytes.  JDK 1.4 itself has a 
problem with the long path and file names (aided by embedded classes).  When 
using a root directory of greater than 12  characters we exceed the windows 
default limit which results in fileIO exceptions.   It's a fragile situation 
since the addition of a new artifact could break us on windows at any time by 
resulting in a path greater than 256 chars even with the normal root directory 
of "geronimo".    John Sisson has learned that this JDK problem is fixed in JDK 
1.5_06.   That should alleviate the build problem (if we get there before we 
had a hard break on JDK 1.4). 

However, even when we get the build problem behind us with JDK 1.5_06 there are 
still other utilities commonly used on Windows that will break with longer path 
names.  For example, Windows Explorer, the CMD shell, WinZip, xcopy, etc... all 
seem to have problems with when we exceed 256 bytes for a name.  

Should we consider attempting to shorten our path names to avoid grief for our 
windows users?  While it is in fact an arbitrary limit, I think that most 
people find particularly long path/file names distracting at the very least and 
not very helpful.   Is it worth enforcing some limits for ease of use as well 
as to prevent problems on Windows?

For additional info see:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/geronimo-dev/200601.mbox/[EMAIL 
PROTECTED]

http://www.mail-archive.com/dev%40geronimo.apache.org/msg19834.html

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