Re: UNC file names

[Aaron Hill]

On 2018-08-09 08:41, James Lowe wrote:
> Sorry this took so long for me to get back to you.
>
> More research tells me that it is not lilypond that is at fault here
> but Windows.
>
> Windows cmd does not support UNC paths.

That should not be relevant, though.  That at most limits the ability 
for the current working directory to be a UNC path, without first 
mapping it to a drive letter.  But it really should not affect the 
ability to invoke LilyPond and pass in a UNC path for the input file.  
As an aside, PowerShell does not have the same working directory 
limitation, and you can `cd` to a UNC path as you wish.

But back to the issue, if LilyPond is ultimately calling CreateFile 
passing in the file path as specified in the command-line arguments, it 
should be able to open a UNC-based path providing there are no 
permissions issues.  What I would suspect is some quirkiness with 
MinGW/MSYS and Posix paths such that LilyPond is not generating the 
correct API call.

As such, what would be interesting is to get a Process Monitor capture 
of the failing case.  That way, we can see which specific file I/O calls 
failed and with which errors.  Unfortunately, I no longer use the 
Windows version of LilyPond, so I cannot immediately test this on my 
setup without having to set up a VM first.  If it is possible to run 
LilyPond in a portable mode without installation, then that would save 
significant time getting a test environment.

-- Aaron Hill