Re: Filename problem in CEDET merge

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>
> Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:50:20 -0400
> Cc: zappo@gnu.org
> 
> While working on the CEDET merge, I've come across a problem with the
> 8+3 filename restriction.
> 
> Semantic, CEDET's parser library, contains filenames that look like
> this:
> 
>  semantic.el
>  semantic-analyze.el
>  semantic-analyze-complete.el
>  semantic-analyze-debug.el
> 
> These clearly break the 8+3 limit.  In the past, we've dealt with this
> by renaming files, e.g. shortening "semantic" to "sem", but even this
> fails:
> 
>  sem-analyze.el
>  sem-analyze-complete.el
>  sem-analyze-debug.el

How about making a subdirectory, in addition to shortening?

 semantic.el                    --> semantic/semantic.el
 semantic-analyze.el            --> semantic/analyze.el
 semantic-analyze-complete.el   --> semantic/analyz-complete.el
 semantic-analyze-debug.el      --> semantic/analyz-debug.el

> Renaming would also have the extremely bad effect of diverging from the
> CEDET upstream, which I'd like to avoid if possible.

Maybe the upstream maintainer will agree to rename, in which case we
don't diverge.

> Does anyone have suggestions for resolving this problem?

Any other solution would mean more work.  We could implement some
file-name remapping feature, for example, whereby Emacs looks up a map
of file names and loads/visits the target of the mapping.  But I
wouldn't even dream requesting such a development effort on behalf of
the DOS port; renaming is so much easier, and is a one-time effort.

> As far as possible, it should remain possible to untar and compile
> Emacs on DOS, though it's acceptable if the CEDET library doesn't
> work on DOS.

Why would it be acceptable for CEDET not to work on DOS?  Up until
now, the only Emacs features that didn't work were those which were
based on infrastructure absent on DOS: networking and async
subprocesses.  It doesn't make sense to me to continue maintaining the
DOS port if we start omitting useful features from it based on
file-name clashes or such likes.