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The path names for plugins in Eclipse are at the length that it causes multiple problems, especially for Windows users. For instance, the 3.2.1 installation contains paths up to 180 characters in size. This bug is intended to replace Bug #150877 and Bug #137232, both of which are caused by this root issue. Among the problems caused are: * the above bugs * tarballs that will contain these paths will not work with older versions of tar (including WinZip, which silently truncates file names) * if attempting to move an installation from a directory where the root path is smaller than the new directory, Windows fails because the path name is too long. * on windows, cannot install into a directory with a root name greater than aproximately 60 characters. * versions of plugins are confusing. There have been times when I somehow had two versions of a plugin that contained the exact same x.x style version and timestamp, but the trailing letters were different. Unfortunately, I do not yet know the internals of the Eclipse project well enough to make a recomendation on how to correct this problem. However, I hope the proposed solution is not "don't use windows", because my job gives me no choice about it. This bug is possibly related to Bug #69620.
I agree -- the length of the qualifier (the random letters after the plugin name) add to unnecessary fluff; especially when you have a feature with such a qualifier as well. And although theoretically they're a good idea, actually just bumping the minor version (or using an abbreviated form of the date) would probably work just as well. This is related to the versioning (http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Version_Numbering) and probably belongs in the build/releng stuff rather than platform runtime -- John Arthorne (added as a cc) may be able to comment on this too. PS this is a particularly big problem for plugins-as-directories-that-contain-expanded-source-trees. So, something like: c:/blah/blah/blah/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.foo.source/src/org/eclipse/foo/Foo.java Here's an example from 3.2: \Eclipse_3-2\plugins\org.eclipse.rcp.source.win32.win32.x86_3.2.1.r321_v20060801-2ekW2BxmcpPUOoq \src\org.eclipse.swt.win32.x86_3.2.1.v3235\about_files\IJG_README That's 150 characters from 'plugins', and generally there'll be an 'eclipse' on the front of that, and some other stuff. Worse if you expand to the desktop (which some people will do) or use the XP Zip, because they'll end up using either: C:\Documents and Settings\userid\Desktop or in the case of the Win XP zip, possibly C:\Documents and Settings\blewia\Local Settings\Temp
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 175714 ***
