Long Path Support

[Silvenga]

Windows has supported long paths (32K characters) for many years now. Sparkleshare (running on .Net) also has access to long paths. I do understand that msysgit only supports 260 characters (MAX_PATH) - however, Cygwin Git can handle 4k characters (limited by Git itself to 1K).

It seems like we should, as a committee, start supporting long file paths. How feasible would it to switch to Cygwin Git (since we do not need the Git tools provided by msysgit)

[BarryThePenguin]

You might find this helpful msysgit/git#122

[hbons]

i'd be fine switching to a different version/distribution of Git if it fixes this problem.
anyone who'd like to explore this possibility?

[Silvenga]

@BarryThePenguin very nice find. This means we would not have to switch the current Git backend implementation (although a upgrade of the shipped Msysgit may be required).

Although, thinking about the impacts of supporting long paths, I am now concerned about the unified source for Windows, MAC, and Linux systems. Can Mono handle the \\?\ syntax for long file names? Does Mono support long file paths on Linux systems?

[BarryThePenguin]

None of those concerns are an issue as msysgit is windows only and *nix doesn't have the same path length issue as windows.

I think you can just download msysgit 1.9.0 and replace the contents of
C:{installdir}\SparkleShare\msysgit with the newer version. Or build an installer from source using the newer version of msysgit.

[Silvenga]

@BarryThePenguin But can Mono support > 260 characters using native methods or the \\?\ syntax (to my knowledge a call to the Windows API to bypass Windows and hand the request directly to the file system device driver). The native Windows FileInfo object in .Net will fail at reaching the constant MAX_PATH.

[hbons]

@BarryThePenguin i don't know where Mono comes into the equation here. it doesn't deal with the paths, the Git binary does so there shouldn't be any issues.

has anyone been able to test this further?

[BarryThePenguin]

@hbons, I think that question should be directed at @Silvenga

[Silvenga]

I can confirm that Git works (even TortoiseGit works now) with paths of 400 characters at least, however, when I allow SparkleShare to auto commit files it deletes the files from Git that are outside of the MAX_PATH zone. I am unsure of why at the moment.

[hbons]

@Silvenga did you build a SparkleShare installer with the new msysgit?

[Silvenga]

@hbons No, but I copied my installation of msysgit into the SparkleShare install directory. SparkleShare should be using the newest binaries.

[genrymich]

@Silvenga you can use Long Path Tool. It works..

[hbons]

@genrymich what's Long Path Tool?

[Silvenga]

@hbons http://longpathtool.com/Order.html

@genrymich This costs money and realistically does very little. I understand how to move files and delete files out size of MAX_PATH.

Many applications have support for long path (Windows 8 Explorer, Java, Visual Studio, etc.) Longpathtool would fix issues but not the root cause.

[hbons]

closing this. this will be fixed when we bundle a new msysgit.

[BarryThePenguin]

Which msysgit will be used?

[hbons]

latest.