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Feature #6446

closed

Remove length limits on project identifier and name

Added by Felix Schäfer over 13 years ago. Updated about 13 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Priority:
Low
Category:
Projects
Target version:
Start date:
2010-09-20
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:
Resolution:
Fixed

Description

Do the length limits make any sense (other than limiting website clutter and such), e.g. breaking PDF layout? If it doesn't make sense, we could just get rid of them.

IRC Excerpt:

[18:49] edavis10: thegcat: we can bump it up if you want to do a review and see why it's so small.  PDF export size?
[18:50] edavis10: same for identifier
...
[18:53] edavis10: thegcat: I'd rather 255 unless there is a reason not to (PDF, etc)

Files

redmine-project-name-and-identifier-limits.diff (3.19 KB) redmine-project-name-and-identifier-limits.diff Project name and identifier limit to 100 characters. TESTED G N, 2010-10-30 02:34
redmine-project-name-and-identifier-limits__mantis.diff.NOT_USED (664 Bytes) redmine-project-name-and-identifier-limits__mantis.diff.NOT_USED Optional patch for migrations from Mantis. NOT TESTED G N, 2010-10-30 02:34
long-names-collision.png (25.2 KB) long-names-collision.png Pedro Kroger, 2010-11-02 19:26

Related issues

Blocked by Redmine - Patch #1789: Raise project-name length-limit from 30 to 35 charactersClosed2008-08-14

Actions
Blocked by Redmine - Feature #504: 12 character project id limitation is too shortClosed

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Blocked by Redmine - Patch #1998: Raise project-identifier length-limit from 20 to 30 charactersClosed2008-10-07

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Blocked by Redmine - Feature #1893: The field size of project name and identifier are too shortClosed2008-09-13

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Precedes Redmine - Defect #2719: Increase username length limit from 30 to 60ClosedJean-Philippe Lang2010-09-21

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Actions #1

Updated by Jean-Baptiste Barth over 13 years ago

It would be great to test it a bit, I don't think there's any major issue (maybe things hidden in PDF exports). I'm surprised to see this subject discussed again and again. Let's take a decision and go on :)

Actions #2

Updated by G N over 13 years ago

People have been asking you to raise this useless limit for several years. Please make a decision and resolve this issue by setting a value > 200 chars! This breaks almost every migration from other platforms and IMO there is no reason valid enough for keeping this restriction.

Actions #3

Updated by G N over 13 years ago

George Notaras wrote:

This breaks almost every migration from other platforms

I don't mean that it breaks ticket imports etc. It breaks the most important part of a web site: the project URL. There have been several changes in the URL scheme in the past. Please make the right decisions from the beginning about URLs. They are very important.

Actions #4

Updated by G N over 13 years ago

I've written a patch to raise the limit of projects names and identifiers to 100 characters. Please note that I am not a Ruby/RoR programmer. Nevertheless, I use this patch on a production system, a web site for my personal open source projects and I am able to use long names in the project names and project identifiers.

For those not familiar with patching, to apply the patch, change to the redmine root dir and run:

patch -p0 < /path/to/redmine-project-name-and-identifier-limits.diff

To reverse the patch:

patch -R -p0 < /path/to/redmine-project-name-and-identifier-limits.diff
Actions #5

Updated by G N over 13 years ago

Forgot to mention that, after applying the patch, you also need to run:

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

... for the limit to be changed in the database.

Actions #6

Updated by Pedro Kroger over 13 years ago

I tried George Notaras' patch and it's working beautifully. The only downsize is that long titles will collide with the tabs:

But I think it's really important to have longer names than 30 characters. I see two solutions; moving the search entry to another place (and having only the title in that row) or showing the title's first n characters.

Actions #7

Updated by Mischa The Evil over 13 years ago

I've updated this issues relations making this a placeholder for the old issues floating around.

Actions #8

Updated by Jean-Philippe Lang over 13 years ago

Just because I'm curious, could someone give a real example of a 200 chars project identifier?

Actions #9

Updated by Felix Schäfer over 13 years ago

I have a "Softwaretechnik - Praxis (Wintersemester 2010/2011)" (51 chars) here, but let's ask the question the other way round: any reason not to bump it up to 255 chars/CHAR length? The DB server at least shouldn't care, rails shouldn't either ;-)

Actions #10

Updated by Jean-Philippe Lang over 13 years ago

Felix Schäfer wrote:

I have a "Softwaretechnik - Praxis (Wintersemester 2010/2011)" (51 chars) here

This is not exactly a project identifier and we are far from 255 chars.
Also, this example looks like a subproject thing (Softwaretechnik > Praxis > Wintersemester 2010/2011), doesn't it?

but let's ask the question the other way round: any reason not to bump it up to 255 chars/CHAR length? The DB server at least shouldn't care, rails shouldn't either ;-)

Of course, it's not a technical problem. We could also change the project name to a long text, why not? :-)

My concern is the UI (see the example above). The main thing is: where should we display these 255 chars long project names? I'm afraid that the page header is not the right place for that.

Actions #11

Updated by Felix Schäfer over 13 years ago

Jean-Philippe Lang wrote:

Felix Schäfer wrote:

I have a "Softwaretechnik - Praxis (Wintersemester 2010/2011)" (51 chars) here

This is not exactly a project identifier and we are far from 255 chars.
Also, this example looks like a subproject thing (Softwaretechnik > Praxis > Wintersemester 2010/2011), doesn't it?

Oh, sorry, title. The whole hierarchy would be something along Technische Universität Berlin > Fakultät Elektrotechnik und Informatik > Institut für Softwaretechnik und Theoretische Informatik > Softwaretechnik - Praxis (Wintersemester 2010/2011), the only thing that could be broken down in the last stage would be Softwaretechnik - Praxis > Wintersemester 2010/2011 (and IIRC in the project hierarchy it is, I don't have it open), but breaking the name up would mean having many projects just called "Wintersemester 2010/2011", not exactly easy to read…

but let's ask the question the other way round: any reason not to bump it up to 255 chars/CHAR length? The DB server at least shouldn't care, rails shouldn't either ;-)

Of course, it's not a technical problem. We could also change the project name to a long text, why not? :-)

My concern is the UI (see the example above). The main thing is: where should we display these 255 chars long project names? I'm afraid that the page header is not the right place for that.

IMHO presentation should not be (such) a (big) consideration when making technical/backend decisions, but a few places that come to mind that could accommodate longer project names: the "title"-header (at least when in a "project" view, could be truncated for other cases), the project list, even the top UI if the theme defines a smaller font, and so on.

Actions #12

Updated by Jean-Philippe Lang over 13 years ago

  • Category set to Projects
  • Status changed from New to Resolved
  • Target version changed from Unplanned backlogs to 1.1.0
  • Resolution set to Fixed

Fair enough. Limits for project names and identifiers were raised respectively to 255 and 100 in r4402.

The 100 chars limit was kept for identifiers considering usual filesystems limits, since this identifier may already be used to name things on the filesystem (eg. automatic repository creation). If longer identifiers are really needed, Project::IDENTIFIER_MAX_LENGTH can be easily adjusted since both fields were changed to varchar(255) in the database.

Actions #13

Updated by G N over 13 years ago

Thanks for resolving this issue.

I noticed that projects with longer names than 30 characters do not appear in the drop down box on the top right corner. I made this observation while using the patch I posted in a previous message.

I'd like to know if this is an issue for other users and, if it is an actual bug, whether r4402 fixes that too or not.

Thanks in advance

Actions #14

Updated by Mischa The Evil over 13 years ago

George Notaras wrote:

I noticed that projects with longer names than 30 characters do not appear in the drop down box on the top right corner. I made this observation while using the patch I posted in a previous message.

I'd like to know if this is an issue for other users and, if it is an actual bug, whether r4402 fixes that too or not.

I have reviewed and tested r4402 and am not able to replicate your issue. Though I can't see anything in both your patch nor the applied changeset which might affect the inclusion of projects in the menu in the top right corner. Are you sure that you are a member of the project? Otherwise the projects don't show up in the drop down at all...
Please open a new issue, if needed, to keep this issue on-topic :wink:

Kind regards,

Mischa.

Actions #15

Updated by G N over 13 years ago

Mischa The Evil wrote:

Are you sure that you are a member of the project? Otherwise the projects don't show up in the drop down at all...

... I had forgotten to make myself a member of those projects as I had created them only for testing... Sorry about that.

Actions #16

Updated by Jean-Philippe Lang over 13 years ago

  • Status changed from Resolved to Closed
Actions #17

Updated by whoiam whoiam about 13 years ago

Could you please give me some guides how to raise project-name length-limit from 30 to 60 characters by writing a plugin instead of a patch file?

Thanks in advance

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