From 50e036cf8cbd69a9551ed52efad50bbc6b3afc32 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: kalibera Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 12:36:31 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Mention legacy path length limit on Windows. git-svn-id: https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk@87156 00db46b3-68df-0310-9c12-caf00c1e9a41 --- doc/manual/R-exts.texi | 9 ++++++--- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/manual/R-exts.texi b/doc/manual/R-exts.texi index 4a3c39a3fc..9dcb0fe8d8 100644 --- a/doc/manual/R-exts.texi +++ b/doc/manual/R-exts.texi @@ -321,9 +321,12 @@ utilities do not accept spaces in file paths): non-English alphabetic characters cannot be guaranteed to be supported in all locales. It would be good practice to avoid the shell metacharacters @code{()@{@}'[]$~}: @code{~} is also used as part of `8.3' filenames on -Windows. In addition, packages are normally distributed as tarballs, -and these have a limit on path lengths: for maximal portability 100 -bytes. +Windows. In addition, some applications on Windows can only work with path +names of certain length, following an earlier limit in the Windows operating +system. Packages are normally distributed as tarballs, and these have a limit +on path lengths. So, to be friendly to users who themselves may want to use a +relatively long path where they extract the package, and for maximal +portability, 100 bytes. A source package if possible should not contain binary executable files: they are not portable, and a security risk if they are of the