[R-pkg-devel] long file names in tar

[Uwe Ligges]

... or simply read the help for ?tar for a short discussion about 
standards and note R is still used on commercial Unixes that ship with 
very old versions of tar.

Best,
Uwe Ligges




On 18.04.2019 20:30, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> You could go down this rabbit hole if you like, but I suspect it has something to do with maintaining compatibility with multiple operating systems and I doubt R Core will explore the consequences of this change for you. Windows, for example, allows long file names but has some nasty corners that break if your  total path+filename is 260+ characters and packages do get installed in directories fairly deep into the directory structure on a regular basis (e.g. packrat). Other tools that the R ecosystem depends on could also have internal constraints that come up when one tool builds on another and so on.
> 
> Have fun with that!
> 
> On April 18, 2019 11:02:15 AM PDT, Steven Scott <steve.the.bayesian using gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks Dirk,
>> Yes, I've done the same, and I agree the rules are the rules.  Rules
>> should
>> be updated when they're no longer helpful, or when their cost outweighs
>> their benefit.  I'm curious whether that might be the case here.
>> Cheers,
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 10:54 AM Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 18 April 2019 at 10:37, Steven Scott wrote:
>>> | My Boom package makes a C++ library available to package authors
>> (mainly
>>> | me).  The wrapped library is used outside of R and must comply with
>>> | external style rules such as UseLongDescriptiveNames, and files
>> must be
>>> | named for the class they contain.  From time to time a
>>> | LongDescriptiveFileName, when paired with its full directory path,
>>> exceeds
>>> | 100 characters.
>>> |
>>> | This creates a conflict with CRAN's rules about long file names,
>> which
>>> | stems from tar.  I'm wondering what this community thinks about
>> asking
>>> for
>>> | that rule to be relaxed.  Both gnu tar and posix tar now allow
>> unlimited
>>> | length filenames, and the ustar format allows names up to 256
>> characters.
>>> |
>>> | I'm interested in the opinions of people on this list about whether
>> this
>>> | rule has outlived its usefulness.  Thanks.
>>>
>>> There are no "opinions". There is CRAN Repo Policy.
>>>
>>> The BH package your Boom depends upon is actually named BH in part
>> because
>>> having a two-letter name shrunk the set of files violating this very
>>> constraint.  Yet at every release I still get to renamed one file,
>> and
>>> update
>>> one include statement.  All documented in the ChangeLog.
>>>
>>> So I would change the filenames, and move on.
>>>
>>> Dirk
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
>>>
>>
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>>
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