launchpad length of filepath limit?

It seems our users have managed to find a file length limit with launch pad on Teamsite 5.5.2

They have some long directory names, and lots of them. Trying to edit a document in a workarea (by edit, I mean anything that will cause the file to download via launchpad) gives the following error:

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Error downloading file "a long workarea relative file path" from TemaSite server:

Error receiving file transfer result from "http://outserver/iw-bin/iwfileupdownload/cgi':

File c:\IWTemp\this path is over 256 characters...
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I can create and edit files in the directory which holds this problematic file, but if I create the file with a long name (20-30chars) it fails. I'm guessing the the file name on it's own isn't a problem, but combined with the parent directories, something breaks.

This system is on the way out, so upgrading isn't an option. Having said that, it's probably going to be around for months yet so a fix would be nice

Does anyone know what this cgi actually does. It's compiled, so I can't even try and fix it.

Short of renaming lots of filenames (which would be a major pain the a***) I'm at a loss.

Any help appreciated

Thanks, ROb

PS: we're running teamsite on solaris 5.8.

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stefanmaier

Hi Rob,
if you run Launchpad, you download the file to you local machine into c:\iwtemp\SERVERNAME\cache\YOURSTORE\main\ANDMORE\...
Windows can't use path and filenames with a total length greater than 255 (or 254 ?, I think) characters,
it's a fixed windows size (for more information search microsoft.com).
Launchpad tries to create the full path structure on your local machine and that's the problem,
if the path is to long, you get this error.

Regards
Stefan

jbonifaci

As Stefan said, you're running into an OS constraint with windows. So upgrading to a different version of TeamSite won't change things.

A couple options:

1) Where are you are checking out your documents to? By default LaunchPad uses 'C:\IWTemp'. You can gain a few characters by shortening this to something like 'C:\IW'. This will obviously only gain you a few characters.

2) Your best bet would be to simplity/shorten your store name, branch names, branching structure and workarea names. That way you won't have to play around with your file structure in your workareas (as much).

3) If the above two options don't get you what you need, you'll then need to simplify your directory and file names.

For 2 and 3, one of the easiest things I can think of to gain a few characters is if you're using underscores in your file/directory names, switch to camel case. The deeper you enforce this, the more characters you'll gain/save.

If all else fails, contact support and see if they have any other solutions to help launchpad shorten the directory structure it creates.

Good luck.

~Jeff

ISCBorisB

...Windows can't use path and filenames with a total length greater than 255 (or 254 ?, I think) characters, it's a fixed windows size

260 - See here

stefanmaier

260 - See here

Hi,
oh yes, you're right.
Had in my mind that it was 255 total length (incl. drive letter, collon and backslash) -1 for NUL at the end...
I never stop learning :-)