Bug#176526: the problem with PATH setting in auxillary script of tetex
On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, [iso-8859-1] Frank Küster wrote:
> Thank you for the explanation-for-dummies
>
> Walter Tautz <wtautz@cs.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
> By the way, could you have a look at http://bugs.debian.org/182880? We
> think this has been fixed (but forgotten in the changelog
> automatics). If you agree, please close it by sending any mail to
> 182880-done@bugs.debian.org
done, apparently one does not need to be developer to do this...
>
> > cp: cannot create regular file `FAKE ACCESS COMMAND\n\n/var/cache/fonts/pk/ljfour/jknappen/ec/pk7825.tmp': No such file or directory
> > [1] )
> [...]
> > I would suggest also looking at some of the other supplementary scripts in
> > /var/lib/texmf/web2c/ if they also set their paths.... correctly
>
> Okay, now I understand the problem and how it arises. However, I am not
> convinced that it is a bug on our side. Instead of contemplating alone,
> I share my doubts with you.
>
> Within a given distribution, duplication of executable names is not
> permitted. Thus, any program from this distribution can safely assume
> that it will get what it wants if it calls "diff" or "sendmail". As a
> side note, in maintainer scripts that are executed upon installation or
> removal of a package, the use of binaries with pathnames is explicitly
> discouraged.
>
> So now you have something in your PATH that is called access and does
> something different from tetex-bin's access. The situation is not so
> fundamentally different from the problem you get if you have some
> /usr/local/bin/sendmail that doesn't what /usr/sbin/sendmail does.
>
> If this reasoning is right, than it is not a bug in tetex-bin's script
> to not make sure they get _their_ access. It could even be regarded as a
> bug if they did - assume that you have some weird filesystem where
> access doesn't work, and you keep a patched one in /usr/local/bin...
>
> This won't be very nice for you, but currently I feel this is how it
> should be viewed.
>
> What could be regarded as a bug, however, is the very generic name of
> our binary. It could well be something like "fileaccess" or "tryaccess"
> or "tex-access". On the other hand, what it does is, with some
> decoration for option parsing, the most generic implementation of a
> user-space binary using access(2).
Unfortunately, I'm forced to agree with your arguments. So, yes, let's regard the rather
generic name of 'access' as the bug. Perhaps giving it a name that will
unlikely be used elsewhere is the solution. Indeed, in my situation I have
given it the name kpseaccess or perhaps web2c_access.... presumably this is a
matter to discuss with the web2c developers.... indeed you should ask them what
their opinion would be on my original bug report...
>
> Regards, Frank
> --
> Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
> Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
>
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