Re: [boost] [guideline] 31 character filenames?

Subject: Re: [boost] [guideline] 31 character filenames?
From: Eric Niebler (eric_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-27 18:25:44

On 3/27/2012 2:22 PM, Daniel James wrote:
> On 27 March 2012 22:08, Eric Niebler <eric_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> Our current guidelines[1] say filenames should not exceed 31 characters.
>> This was recently brought to my attention by a bug[2] from someone who
>> actually cares because he uses the ODS-2 filesystem on OpenVMS. On a
>> lark, I hacked the inspect tool to check for too-long filenames and lo!
>> found a bazillion. Most (but not all) violations are from doc files
>> auto-generated by doxygen and docbook, but which nevertheless go out
>> with the boost distribution and so should conform. (Right?)
>>
>> So, should we care? Considering that we have little control(?) over how
>> doxygen and docbook generate their files? I have fixed the bug in
>> question, but it feels like a token effort. Should we just drop support
>> for niche filesystems like ODS-2, and close all future bugs "won't fix"?
> 
> It is different for source and documentation files, because
> documentation files aren't going to break a build.

OK, is that the intent of the guideline? What happens when someone tries
to unpack the boost tarfile on a filesystem that doesn't support long
filenames? Are the doc files with long names silently dropped? Or is it
an error? Or...? :-/

-- 
Eric Niebler
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com