[darcs-users] double dots are not allowed in filenames?

[Yitzchak Gale]

I wrote:
>> (Can that include UNC paths on Windows?
>> It would be nice.)

David Roundy wrote:
> I'm not sure what an UNC path is on windows.

They look like:

\\host-name\share-name\rest-of-path

Whenever someone designates a folder as
"shared" and gives it a share name, others
within the local Windows network (domain
or workgroup) can use the folder in this way
wherever a local path can be used. I guess
it is kind of like an nfs mount in some sense.

Unfortunately, these things behave badly whenever
there are any network problems, and apps tend
to hang in that case. Oh well. Anyway, I think
Windows users would like this to work as expected
(i.e., nice when things are good, hang otherwise).

Note that Windows "drive letters" have this same
bad behavior, because you can assign a drive
letter to a share.

> On windows, I think we should treat c:/path/to...
> as a local path (i.e. c
> is the drive letter).

Good idea. Drive letter path semantics are embedded
deep in the psyche of Windows users. rcp-style remote
paths are foreign to them.

> If someone really has a one-character hostname, they
> can always use a fully-qualified domain name for their scp path.

Perhaps we should also support "scp:" and/or "sftp:"
URLs.

I just noticed that the IETF has abandoned all plans
to recognize this type of URL, or anything else related
to SSH. It appears that the SSH approach is becoming
deprecated, in favor of security wrappers around other
protocols.

It probably would be a good idea to add support for
something like WebDAV to darcs - meaning you could
also darcs push/put to http:// and https://.
libcurl has support for WebDAV, so maybe it's not
a big deal to add.

Most people nowadays are more comfortable with
WebDAV than SSH. I personally prefer SSH,
but it becomes an issue with other members of
my team.

Regards,
Yitz