[R-pkg-devel] Wrong mailing list: Could the 100 byte path length limit be lifted?

[McGrath, Justin M]

When submitting a package to CRAN, it is required that path names be shorter than 100 bytes, with the reason that paths longer than that cannot be made into portable tar files. This error is reported by `R CMD check --as-cran`. Since this pertains only to developing packages, this seemed like the appropriate list, but if you don't think so, I can instead ask on R-devel.

Best wishes,
Justin

________________________________________
From: Martin Maechler <maechler using stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2023 10:13 AM
To: McGrath, Justin M
Cc: r-package-devel using r-project.org
Subject: Wrong mailing list: [R-pkg-devel] Could the 100 byte path length limit be lifted?

>>>>> McGrath, Justin M
>>>>>     on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 15:03:28 +0000 writes:

    > We include other software in our source code. It has some long paths so a few of the files end up with paths longer than 100 bytes, and we need to manually rename them whenever we pull in updates.
    > The 100 byte path limit is from tar v7, and since
    > POSIX1.1988, there has not been a path length limit. That
    > standard is 35 years old now, so given that there is
    > probably no one using an old version of tar that also
    > wants to use the latest version of R, could the 100 byte
    > limit be lifted? Incidentally, I am a big proponent of
    > wide, long-term support, but it's hard to see that this
    > change would negatively impact anyone.

    > Best wishes,
    > Justin

Wrong mailing list:

This is a topic for R-devel,  not at all R-package-devel,
but be more accurate in what you are talking about, only between
the line I could read that it is about some variants of using
'tar'.

Best regards,
Martin
---

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich  and  R Core team