Spurious URL syntax error: "Win32 file urls start with file:///x:/ where x is a valid drive letter"

[Misha Dorman]

Affects: bzr 0.9, Win32 native.

Attempting to use a UNC path (//servername/share/path/.../, or for that matter the \\...\ equivalent) in bzr 0.9 on Win32 fails, because _win32_local_path_from_url() is overly-picky about the possible forms of Win32 file:/// URL syntax.

A workaround is to map a drive to the UNC path, but that is far from ideal (UNC paths may not be perfect, but they at least get around the 26-letter drive letter limitation and reduce the scope for collisions).

This bug doesn't seem to affect the cygwin version (presumably it uses the _posix_ versions of the local_path functions, which (accidentally?) allow the //servername/path/.../ syntax.

The fix will also need to change _win32_local_path_to_url() and WIN32_MIN_ABS_FILEURL_LENGTH, which also rely on the "starts with drive letter" assumption.

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

this is a bug, and patches are welcome. Probably the best thing is to use: 'file://host/path' rather than using 'file://///host/path'.