Mercurial: Commit files with more than 255 characters path length (Windows)?

Question

I try to commit a folder hierarchy into out Mercurial repository, which contains files, whiches absolute path length exceeds 255 characters (Windows max. path length).

For these files I receive an error message saying

The system cannot find the path specified

We use TortoiseHG and an Eclipse plugin for Mercurial, both don't work.

Has anybody found a solution for this? (I do not want to change the repository's location on my HD)

Answer 1

There exists an extension which is aimed at solving this exact problem. It is: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/Win32LongFileNamesExtension

It uses \\?\ style names to transparently handle long files.

I'm the author, let me know if it works for you.

Answer 2

I've just installed Aaron Cohen' extension, as he suggested. And it perfectly works with my TortoiseHG 2.6.1 ! Thanks, Aaron!

Though, I'd like to add a detailed guide here, because I cannot find one...

(At least here's what I did on my Win7 x64 - I'm not sure this is the shortest way possible)

1. Download Mercurial-py

• Note the Python version required
• I've downloaded "Mercurial-2.4.2 (64-bit py2.7)"

2. Download Python

• Make sure you're downloading compatible version.
• I used "Windows X86-64 MSI Installer (2.7.3)" link

3. Install Python

• I've installed it to "D:\Python27"

4. Download pywin32

• It's required by the Win32LongFileNamesExtension.
• Note the Python version number in pywin32's filename.
• I used "pywin32-218.win32-py2.7.exe"

5. Install pywin32

• Make sure installer detected correct Python installation
• In my case, it's installed in "d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\pywin32_system32\"

6. Install Mercurial

• Make sure installer detected correct Python installation
• In my case, it's installed in "d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\mercurial\"

7. Set PYTHONPATH enviroment variable

setx PYTHONPATH d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\win32lfn\src;d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\mercurial\

• Use this cli command, or do the same using some other method
• Of course, you should adapt paths to your needs
• Restart your cli after this, to make sure env. variable is now properly set

8. Download win32lfn

• Check for availible downloads on the project's repository page
• If there's still nothing, just clone a repository from https://bitbucket.org/remleduff/win32lfn to "d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\win32lfn\"
• Now "win32lfn.pyc" should be in "d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\win32lfn\src\"

9. Do interanal win32lfn tests

cd /D D:\Python27
python d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\win32lfn\tests\testwin32lfn.py

10. Create a backup of your repository.

• For me, everything went just fune, but you never know....

11. Add win32lfn to hgrc

[extensions]
win32lfn = d:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\win32lfn\src\win32lfn.py

• you can find "hgrc" in your ".hg" folder, inside your repository

12. Test it!