Re: Hamm Bug Stamp-Out List for June 25, 1998
Hi,
>>"Bdale" == Bdale Garbee <bdale@gag.com> writes:
Bdale> If you're working in a multi-machine networked environment,
Bdale> and are accessing another system using NFS (particularly with
Bdale> an automounted host map), an absolute link can easily violate
Bdale> "the principle of least astonishment"... if you are tracking
Bdale> down a remote machine's filesystems, and cross an absolute
Bdale> symbolic link, you're back on your local system's filesystem!
Bdale> That's almost never what you meant, or what you wanted.
On the other hand, if you are using automount, or AFS, or DFS,
or even, in some environments, NFS, you may keep all mounts
under, say, /mnt (eg /usr -> /mnt/i386/usr), in which case, any
relative links between top level directories loose.
In this case, a relative symlink also violates the princple of
least astonishment, and indeed, does not even work.
I think, on balance, the policy works for the most common
case.
manoj
3.3.5. Symbolic links
---------------------
In general, symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be
relative, and symbolic links pointing from one toplevel directory into
another should be absolute. (A toplevel directory is a sub-directory
of the root directory `/'.)
In addition, symbolic links should be specified as short as possible,
i.e., link targets like `foo/../bar' are depreciated.
--
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do
the work of one extraordinary man." Elbert Hubbard ...yet. Karl
Lehenbauer
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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