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olov/lossy_dropbox.txt

Created January 5, 2014 19:19
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Dropbox, you're handling >260 long paths wrong on Windows
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lossy_dropbox.txt
Hello there,
I'm supporting DELETED and DELETED with IT. Both of them are paying customers of yours. I was pretty shocked when I learned today that when you encounter a path longer than 260 characters (on a Windows system), you do no sync it, and you do not inform the end user about it. In a shared folder setup, this is pretty disastrous.
I can think of two sensible ways to handle the limitation of 260 character long paths in Windows.
1. Detect them, and inform the user prominently that he/she has files that will not be synced.
2. Detect and sync as usual (this is certainly possible from a technical standpoint).
Your current way of handling this causes lots of frustration to end-users and at the end of the day, may cause them to lose data quite easily.
Lots of users on Windows systems have files in paths longer than 260 characters.
You can reach me at olov.lassus@gmail.com
Best regards,
Olov
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