[Rd] Wrong/incomplete documentation regarding the 100-bytes path length limit.

[Iago Bonnici]

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).

     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.

     Best regards,

--
Iago-lito
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