Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Removes 260-Character Path Length Limit In Windows 10 Redstone (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Windows 10 build 14352, a preview version of the upcoming Anniversary Update (also known as Redstone), comes with an eagerly awaited change that Microsoft hasn't yet announced publicly. The 260-character path length limit in Windows can be removed with the help of a new policy, thus allowing you to run operations with files regardless of their path or file name. While this new rule is not enabled by default, admins can turn it on by following these instructions. Launch the Registry Editor by clicking the Start menu and typing "regedit.exe," and then navigate to the following path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\{48981759-12F2-42A6-A048-028B3973495F}Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Policies. Look for an entry called "LongPathsEnabled," and if it does not exist, simply right-click Policies, select New DWORD (32-bit), name it "LongPathsEnabled" (without the quotes), enter value 1, and you're good to go. The description of the preview reads, "Enabling NTFS long paths will allow manifested win32 applications and Windows Store applications to access paths beyond the normal 260 char limit per node. Enabling this setting will cause the long paths to be accessible within the process." While the Windows 10 preview build 1452 has been made available last week, according to Windows Central, a Microsoft team member says that the company could released Windows 10 Mobile build 14352 for Insiders on Tuesday, May 31.
It's great that Windows is getting some of the capabilities that *nix had in the 1970s and 1980s. Let's see, they now have full support for storage over 2TB with Windows 7 service pack 2; only 20 years behind Linux. Before that, they were only 20 years behind on 2GB storage. And now they're only 30-40 years behind on long paths.
Based on this schedule, in another 10 years, they'll move beyond simplistic "any program run by Administrator can do anything, to anything" and get grown-up security, mandatory access control like SELinux and grsecurity have provided for a decade on Linux.