Re: [rdiff-backup-users] long filename error

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Jan 4, 2009, at 4:11 AM, Ryan wrote:

> Under Windows XP with version 1.3.0, if I try to back up the  
> following file,
>
> "C:\important stuff 
> \1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 
> "
>
> I get:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "rdiff-backup", line 30, in <module>
>   File "rdiff_backup\Main.pyc", line 309, in error_check_Main
>   File "rdiff_backup\robust.pyc", line 77, in is_routine_fatal
> NameError: global name 'e' is not defined


Hi Ryan,

Thanks for reporting this error. The error message is unhelpful  
because of a typo. I am fixing that in the next release.

The next release will also allow rdiff-backup to ignore (some? all?)  
of the errors caused by too-long filenames on Windows. It does not yet  
backup such files. See this thread on the mailing list for the  
explanation: http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2008-10/msg00117.html

Basically, rdiff-backup will need to move to Unicode file handling and  
prepend "\\\\?\\" to each Windows path in order to support long paths  
& filenames ( > 255 characters, or so). That is something for the  
development branch, possibly even for the next one.


Andrew