[xtext-dev] Fwd: Case-Sensitive Filenames

[Heiko Behrens <heiko.behrens@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have filed Bug https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=266467 to address this issue.

While a naming convention is a way to avoid errors in the first place it is not bullet-proof though. Similar to our AbstractXtextTests we could guard every loading mechanism with something like http://processing.org/discourse/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=Proce55ing_software_bugs;action="">

Looking left and right I would say that case-sensitive file references are most critical in MWE where workflows include each other as fragments. In this context, an approach as seen above would not be sufficient since users might work with relative path construcuts like "../../anotherDirectory/aFile" or use directory links. A canonical path by itself could not be used as comparison than.

But our import mechanism in Xtext using file based URIs might cause errors as well.

What are your thoughts about this?

Begin forwarded message:

From: Heiko Behrens <heiko.behrens@xxxxxxxxx>

Date: 25. Februar 2009 12:08:44 MEZ

To: Xtext dev list <xtext-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject: Case-Sensitive Filenames

Hi all,

while using the latest xtext build (thanks, Dennis) I encountered a weird problem that can be boiled down to case-sensitive handling of filenames.

e.g. the
org/eclipse/xtext/ui/generator/standardUiAndRuntime.mwe referst to a file named
org/eclipse/xtext/generator/standardRuntimeFragments.mwe

but inside the provided Jar resides a file called *S*andardRuntimeFragments.mwe.

During our development cycles we are not working with the Jars but are using the files from the files system directly. And since most of us if not all work with case-insensitive files systems this error has not yet been detected.

Even though I would prefer a way to detect such errors I do not have a proper solution for this at the moment. Therefore, I would rather try to avoid such errors by using naming conventions. That means: We either write non-java-files such as Workflow, Check, Xpand, Xtend etc. with a capital or a small letter at the beginning.

Since our Java files start with a capital and Windows users might have problems to produce files names starting with a lowercase I am suggesting to use uppercase letters.

I will than open a bug that describes to error from above as well as an action to rename and edit the current files.


Any comments?

--
Heiko Behrens
Software Architect

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