Help! modifying os to support >14 char filenames (sys V.3)

[Miguel A. Ramirez]

In article <1990Sep9.002823.16243 at onion.pdx.com> jeff at onion.pdx.com (Jeff Beadles) writes:
>cliff at motcsd.csd.mot.com (cliff.rodriguez) writes:
>
>>We are working on a project to convert our system V based system (ver 3)
>>from 14 char file names to something much larger.  Has anyone out there
>>done this, or heard it done?  I need to know if this is going to be the
>>slow tedious task I think it is.   Any suggestion on how to speed up the
>>work or some magic answer would be appreciated... thanks in advance...cliff
>
>This is a long, slow, painful process.  (I know--  We've done it.)  We
>implimented the Berkeley FFS as a filesystem type at the same time.

Not all of it is slow and painfull. At some point in your development work
you will have to modify the COFF object and executable file format.  Or 
will you? COFF has defined small 14 char arrays to hold the names of files. 
Once filenames are greater than that, how will you handle it? 

>Overall, this is not a trivial task.  Be prepared to check user code from
>'ar' to 'zcat'.

We here at Amdahl have added long file name support to our UNIX- UTS 2.1.
256 chars for the base name 1024 for the the full path name. 
Have fun!



-- 

Miguel A. Ramirez, | machina at uts.amdahl.com | {sun,uunet}!amdahl!machina