Bug#138195: why not just use symlinks correctly?
On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Branden Robinson wrote:
> You spent a lot of time in the bug logs of #138195 arguing that the
> chdir() before the execv() would have exactly this advantage, didn't
> you?
>
> If so, how is this an advantage over the current implementation?
Eh? I haven't weighed in on this issue at all. I simply saw the
changelog message when upgrading my X packages, read the 138195 bug
report, and wondered why nobody had pointed out what seemed "obvious" to
me.
That is, the bug poster is complaining that relative symlinks don't
work; they don't work because symlinks are being used (IMHO) incorrectly
in the code (that is, the kernel symlink resolution is being bypassed).
The solution I saw proposed (chdir) involved adding code to work around
this problem; a better solution (again, IMHO) is to not do the
problematic thing.
> > - less code
> What you're eliminating is hardly subtle or confusing.
>From a code point of view, no. From a user point of view, perhaps.
The chdir() is not documented (to my knowledge) and could potentially
cause errors in some setups (though I'll admit that most users will just
use the default setup, which shouldn't care).
> Maybe so, but people have had weeks now to comment on my fix, thanks to
> the SVN commit messages being posted to debian-x.
>
> I'd have more sympathy for nitpicky stylistic criticism if people would
> earn the right to do so by paying attention to the Debian XFree86's
> packages development process.
I do apologize for that. I don't really have time to keep up with every
commit, and it was in fact random chance that I decided to look at this
bug (after seeing it mentioned in the changelog, which I generally
skim). So this was the first I had seen it.
I don't mean to beat up on you stylistically, either; I merely saw a
discussion where the "obvious" solution was not pointed out, so I
thought I would point it out.
If it's not worth the time in continuing the discussion, you can just
tell me to shut up. :)
-Peff
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