[development] Multi-site absolute paths?

[Sam Tresler]

Been following a forum thread and was wondering if anyone had any input 
towards a way to make multi-site pathnames more manageble

Thread: http://drupal.org/node/84895

The basic issue is that pathnames for a multi-site install can easily 
get huge.  But there is  strong desire to keep all site-relevant 
material in the /sites/sitename folder.

Suggested fixes were symbolic links from drupal root direct to, say, the 
files folder, but that isn't portable to Windows, gets unwieldy with 
many sites, and doesn't account for the sites/themes  and sites/modules 
folders.

Example situtation.  One codebase - two installs.  CSS absolute path to 
background image.

    http://example.com/sites/example.com/files/images/background.jpg

it gets worse with subdomains...

    
http://test_layout.example.com/sites/test_layout.example.com/files/images/background.jpg


Does anyone know a good portable workaround?  Am I missing something 
obvious?

-- 
Sam Tresler
sam at treslerdesigns.com