Re: updating TeXLive packages exceeds Windows path length limit

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please at cygwin dot com>]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:06:54AM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>On Nov 14 10:25, Markus Hoenicka wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I've just downloaded the latest setup-x86.exe to update my Cygwin
>> installation on a Windows XP box. While setup downloads the required
>> packages, it stops with a message saying:
>> 
>> Can't open \\servername\path\to\Downloads\[url_of_mirror]\path\to\texlive-collection-documentation-base-20130529-1.tar.bz2.tmp
>> for writing: No such file or directory
>> 
>> Problem is, if I try to create a file with the same name manually in
>> Windows Explorer, I apparently hit the maximum allowed path length
>> just after the 't' in 'tmp'. In other words, the package filename is
>> exactly two characters too long on my system and using my closest
>> mirror. Setup exits without updating the system.
>> 
>> Is there a way to fix this? I know that I can try and find a mirror
>> with a shorter URL, but I expect others to bump into the same
>> problem sooner or later.
>
>You could create a symlink in \\servername\path pointing to
>\\servername\path\to\Downloads\[url_of_mirror] to workaround this
>I guess.
>
>The only other way to fix this is to fix setup.  A long time ago I
>tweaked setup to get rid of the MAX_PATH path length restriction, but
>apparently this only worked for the files to install, not for the
>archive files.  I'm just looking through the setup code for downloading
>files, and it still calls the OS ANSI file API exclusively, rather then
>the UNICODE API, which is the culprit for this problem.
>
>Sigh.  This is a lot of work still to do.

I started down the path of removing the #(&# encoded mirror path names
in the download directory a while ago.  I will try to get that rolled
out again.  That won't solve the problem but it should help a bit.

In the meantime, I'd suggest at least renaming the [url_of_mirror] to
something like "A".  I think that should still work with setup.

cgf

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