svn command line utility will not work if full file name is longer then 256 characters

Question

I cannot create working copy from command line using svn utility if resulting full file names for some files are too long.
But I can successfully create working copy from TortoiseSVN or from Subclipse.
Why?

Answer 1

As a workaround, you can subst your working copy to a drive letter to keep down the path length:

C:\Users\Me\SVN\My\Cool\Repository\With\A\Very\Long\Path> subst S: .
C:\Users\Me\SVN\My\Cool\Repository\With\A\Very\Long\Path> S:
S:> svn up

Answer 2

This isn't really a limitation of the svn client but of the windows console: relative paths can't exceed MAX_PATH (254) chars when expanded.

And unlike some commenter here claims, it is not an oversight of the svn developers to forget about MAX_PATH. Because: if you pass full paths instead of relative ones, the commands will work.

So, instead of

cd C:\some\...\very\long\path
svn up .

run

svn up c:\some\...\very\long\path

and it should work just fine.

Answer 3

If your command line is in fact the Cygwin bash, then you could have hit this bug:

http://www.itefix.no/i2/node/11064 or http://old.nabble.com/file-name-too-long-td22189828.html

which in fact is, that Cygwin can't handle paths with lengths over 255 chars. (In addition to Stefan's answer: Neither absolute nor relative paths are possible here.) Cygwin 1.7, which is beta since half a year, seems to fix this.