genabout does not support writing to windows paths > 255 chars

[tstephens619]

Windows, Python27
The genabout tool will trow an error if the .about file is being written to a filename/directory path that is > 255 characters. The paths can become quite large. Is there any workaround for this?

-Tim

[chinyeungli]

Potential solution:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14075465/copy-a-file-with-a-too-long-path-to-another-directory-in-python

[chinyeungli]

@tstephens619 I will need to discuss with @pombredanne to think of a correct solution for this issue. In the mean time, you can use Cygwin to run AboutCode to prevent this issue.

[pombredanne]

@chinyeungli @tstephens619 the issue is a windows issue more than a Python issue. The win32 api does not supports paths longer than 260 chars even though NTFS does. There are ways around it though, using some magic UNC prefix \\?\ ... For instance this function handles it: https://bitbucket.org/jaraco/jaraco.windows/src/ad8bc62c0bba919ee4d8b8e42d133e09d6b41d64/jaraco/windows/filesystem/__init__.py?at=default#cl-79

So we have a way to deal with it alright. I will come up with a suggested implementation in the simplification branch sometimes next week.

[pombredanne]

Just for reference this is the bug in Python:
https://bugs.python.org/issue18199

[pombredanne]

@chinyeungli this bug has been fixed, right? if so please close

[chinyeungli]

Yes