bin/144411: [patch] mtree(8) doesn't reject non-regular files for -X

Bruce Evans brde at optusnet.com.au
Tue Mar 30 19:12:32 UTC 2010


On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Bruce Evans wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>     I'm not 100% satisfied with this patch now. Looking back it fails
>> the following case:
>> 
>>      -P    Do not follow symbolic links in the file hierarchy, instead con-
>>            sider the symbolic link itself in any comparisons.  This is the
>>            default.
>
> -P should have the same semantics and description in all utilities.  The
> description should not have grammar errors like the above (comma splice).
> ...
> I now see that the grammar error is from the original version of mtree(1),
> and is probably one of the things you don't like.  mtree also has -L, but
> not -R or -P or -h.  It is not clear how any utility that traverses trees
> can work without a full complement of -[HLPR] or how any utility that
> ...

Looking at the actual patch, I now see that it is about a completely
different problem.  You would only need to understand the amount of
brokenness of -P to see if you need to use lstat().  I think -P is so
broken that mtree on symlinks doesn't work at all and not using lstat()
would be safest.

The patch has some style bugs.

Bruce


More information about the freebsd-bugs mailing list