News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by cma on Monday October 31, 2016 @10:13AM (#12836831)
One big issue is still the 260-character path-name limitation. Deep source directories choke on that, especially if you copy them around for backup, etc.

You end up abbreviating class names in the file names and mess up searchability.

You end up using single letter directories like 'C:\b\' instead of 'C:\backup\', etc. as workarounds. It all feels very MS DOS.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by pjc50 on Monday October 31, 2016 @10:18AM (#12836873)
It looks like that's one of the things that they've finally, finally fixed (but only if you turn it on): https://mspoweruser.com/ntfs-260-character-windows-10/
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by novaleaf on Monday October 31, 2016 @02:01PM (#12839290)
yeah, and break all apps that use the old 255 char win32 api's.

another thing to note is that it requires the windows insider preview, which in my experience required auto reboots every few days. very frustrating so I had to revert....

Switching off of Insider Preview is a TERRIBLE experience of it's own: You can't actually revert back. you either have to restore from backup (which isn't mentioned when you switch to insider preview mode) or wait for the next mainline release, which may be 6+ months away, and you have to MANUALLY TRACK when insider syncs with main and then switch to main during the window in which they are matched.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by cma on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:34PM (#12838981)
If it is only fixed if you turn it on, it isn't really fixed yet IMO. You can't make public projects rely on it, etc. without turning off a big percentage of your users.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by my123 on Monday October 31, 2016 @10:19AM (#12836888)
This limit never existed in the NT kernel, it's a Win32 SubSystem limit that can be workarounded with \??\ at the beginning of the path
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by my123 on Monday October 31, 2016 @10:18AM (#12836882)
Windows no longer has that limit since a decade at least.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by Retric on Monday October 31, 2016 @10:25AM (#12836939)
I hit this on windows 8. So, there might might be a workaround, but it's still an issue for most users.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than A... by dblohm7 on Monday October 31, 2016 @11:19AM (#12837528)
The limit is enforced unless an application ops out of it.
[ Parent | on HN ]