Error 10083: path, file name, or both are too long

[pdenchfield]

When running PDF builds from targets in Flare projects received from localization, I'm getting the 10083 error with the following text:
"The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters."

10083-error.png

However, the path is about 100 characters under the maximum, and the file name is only ~15 characters.

I can copy the project to my hard drive and build without error.

This only happens with some of the localized projects (2 out of 4 so far). The projects are under the same network folder. I'm stymied. Any ideas?

[RamonS]

This limitation from the DOS days applies to the entire path & file name. Also, as far as I know the limit is 254 total for both plus any command line parameters.
The only idea I have is to map the network share as far down as possible to shorten the path even more...assuming that Flare does not resort to UNC.

[pdenchfield]

The complete file path including spaces and file name is well under the maximum stated. The problem projects are in the same location as the projects that work. I'm not sure what's going on here.

[SteveS]

The complete file path including spaces and file name is well under the maximum stated. The problem projects are in the same location as the projects that work. I'm not sure what's going on here.

Does the path/ filename from the root (C:) comply with the file length constraints? Quite often these things use an absolute, rather than relative, file path.

[pdenchfield]

Hi Steve, yes I'm calculating from the complete path (starting with my company's intranet URL) instead of the shorter path starting with the mapped drive letter. Thanks for the question.

[SteveS]

Can you build a different target (such as HTML) from the same localised project?

[Msquared]

In my experience the error usually relates to temporary files that Flare creates while building the output. Look in the folders below where your output is built for the culprits. It is unlikely to be a problem in the generated output as such.

You will almost certainly find that your problem projects have one or two topics that have slightly longer file names than the others.

Options are:

Locate and fix the specific files that are causing the problems. All good until the next time.

Reduce all your files and folder names to the shortest possible. A bind.

Move the folder where Flare generates the output away from your project structure, and nearer the top level of your folder structure.

Map your Flare project area to another drive and work on that. That will shorten all your filenames. I do this for other reasons, and it can be a bit of a bind, especially if you work with some source control systems. And if you do this, you, and others, will only ever be able to work on the Flare projects via the mapped drive as Flare embeds the drive letter in some absolute file paths.

This keeps coming up

[rob hollinger]

The following come into play when facing these types of errors:

These are added to the over all length of the path when building for both the Output folder and the Temporary folder:
\Output\NAME\HTML5
\Output\NAME\Temporary\HTML5

[Output]\[Your Name]\[Target Name]

[ToddPh]

Bear in mind also that the error may be generated by a file that is much deeper in the file folder structure during the build process, rather than the files in the main working folders. That error (to me) is really saying that at least one file ran over the path\filename limitation. I would be especially suspicious of language builds such as German that are notorious for long words.

[RamonS]

I would be especially suspicious of language builds such as German that are notorious for long words.

That is an old wives' tale and not generally true. It all depends on the choice of words and the fact that German allows for concatenating words it is in some cases even shorter.

I don't think that has any impact here anyway because building to other languages most likely will not change the file names only the content.

[ToddPh]

I would be especially suspicious of language builds such as German that are notorious for long words.

That is an old wives' tale and not generally true. It all depends on the choice of words and the fact that German allows for concatenating words it is in some cases even shorter.

I don't think that has any impact here anyway because building to other languages most likely will not change the file names only the content.

Not working with multiple languages myself, I was not aware of the concatenation.

[Msquared]

@Rob,

This comes up so often that I've been thinking of writing a blog post about it so I can just post a link to that the next time someone has a problem.

Flare can be a rather greedy with filename characters, in my experience. I did some experimenting the other day, and found that most of the time, my output area typically has file names that are around 40 characters longer than the file names in my Flare folder. That matches your example saying that "\Output\NAME\Temporary\HTML5" is added. In my case, that's "\Output\marjorie.jones\Temporary\HTML5" which is just under 40 characters. But what about this file generated as part of one of my PDF targets which adds a whopping 66 characters?

My original filename is
T:\Perforce\DocsCloud\Docs\Source\Flare\en\User Guide\Content\Resources\Images\Shared\UIItems\ResourceSelector.png (114 characters)

Flare generates a temporary file from this called
T:\Perforce\DocsCloud\Docs\Source\Flare\en\User Guide\Output\marjorie_jones\Temporary\GG\PDF-AllGadgets\PDF-AllGadgets_671A8D35\Resources\Images\Shared\UIItems\ResourceSelector.png (180 characters).

Let's analyse my source structure a minute . . .
"T:\Perforce\DocsCloud\Docs\" is imposed on me by the structure of our source control system.
"\Source\Flare\en\User Guide" is my attempt to impose some structure on my document content.
"\Content\Resources\Images" is Flare's choice of structure
"\Shared\UIItems\ResourceSelector.png " is my attempt to impose some structure on the images in my project.

I've pared down my filenames as much as I can, at each and every level, and even got my developers to reorganise our source code repository because I used to regularly exceed the filename limit. You will note that embedded in there is my target name (in this case "/GG/PDF-AllGadgets") and then the filename part of the target again with some random extra characters appended, so if I'd picked a longer subfolder name below /Targets, or a longer target name, the final file name could easily have been much longer. I have multiple documents in a single project, so I use a two character code for subfolders to organise the document-specific content where appropriate. I learned long ago to pick short names for subfolders at every level.

When I blow the filename limit, it's usually in the /Temporary folder. Is there any chance that Flare could be a bit more economical with its filenames in this area please?

[rob hollinger]

Marjorie,
This is a current feature request and I invite you to add more to it by requesting it via this link:
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback ... quest.aspx

Hopefully in a future version of Flare we can figure something out with regard to these folders currently required to build.

[ccardimon]

I ran into this problem myself. Solved it by shortening ALL the name of ALL the topics.

See these additional threads:

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... &sk=t&sd=a

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... &sk=t&sd=a

[gbusch]

I recently ran into the same problem.

My project is bind to a source control.
Since i also work on different stuff in SVN (not just Flare) and to keep track of the location of local working copies compared to their location in the repository i keep the folder structure of the SVN as is on my local machine. So C:\SVN\FOO on my local machine is the same as svn://repository/FOO in the repository. Anyway there is no way to get my developers to adapt the SVN structure to fit my (or Flares) needs. The path to my Flare project is pretty long until the actual project folder starts... (Up to 100 Chars)

I solved my issue by creating a symlink on my local machine that points to the actual Flare project folder.
The symlink is named very shortly "MC_[ProjectName]" and is located in C:
So i did not have to change anything in my Project or to my local folder structure or even in SVN. I just need to make sure to open the project using the symlink instead of its actual location. So every co-author just needs to create a symlink named exactly like mine that points to the actual location of the project on his machine. So even other users don't need to change their local folder structure. It just doesn't matter where the project actually is located and how long the path is as long as every one uses the symlinks.

With symlinks you can also link to network resources and let them act as a local folder. (did not test that, but can't think of anything why this would not work with flare - maybe you will need some windows setting to follow symlinks on network resources)

The only thing you will have to change manually in your project is - if you're using imports from other projects - the path to other projects.
Look for C:/original/path/ (forward slahes) as well as for C:\original\path\ (backslashes) and chage it to your symlink to that particular project. Doing a global search & replace in a given folder should do the trick. (skip reports - if any - they may contain thousands of references to the original path - waste of time)

What is a symlink you may ask?
Well, at this point it really doesn't matter what a symlink actually is.
Just create it and be happy.
How to create one?
That's easy: Start command line and type

Code: Select all

mklink /D  C:\MC_ProjectName  C:\actual\long\path\to\your\flare\project

Press [ENTER].
Done.

Hope this helps


PS: Keep your target names short too. They will be used in the temporary folder two times. I had one "Default/Handbuch DIN A 4 (Online - PDF)". Which for example results in "C:\MC_Project\Output\username\Temporary\Default\Handbuch DIN A 4 (Online - PDF)\Handbuch DIN A 4 (Online - PDF)_3719D50E\GeneratedImages\myfabulous_image.png" (153 chars!).
Changed it to "PDFA4" only results in "C:\MC_Project\Output\username\Temporary\PDFA4\PDFA4_3719D50E\GeneratedImages\myfabulous_image.png" (97 chars only)