From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932626AbWBYJQK (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:16:10 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932394AbWBYJQK (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:16:10 -0500 Received: from pentafluge.infradead.org ([213.146.154.40]:34797 "EHLO pentafluge.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932627AbWBYJQJ (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:16:09 -0500 Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 09:16:07 +0000 From: Christoph Hellwig To: Ulrich Drepper Cc: akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] flags parameter for linkat Message-ID: <20060225091606.GA22749@infradead.org> Mail-Followup-To: Christoph Hellwig , Ulrich Drepper , akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org References: <200602231410.k1NEAMk1021578@devserv.devel.redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200602231410.k1NEAMk1021578@devserv.devel.redhat.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by pentafluge.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 09:10:22AM -0500, Ulrich Drepper wrote: > I'm currently at the POSIX meeting and one thing covered was the > incompatibility of Linux's link() with the POSIX definition. The > difference is the treatment of symbolic links in the destination > name. Linux does not follow symlinks, POSIX requires it does. > > Even somebody thinks this is a good default behavior we cannot > change this because it would break the ABI. But the fact remains > that some application might want this behavior. > > We have one chance to help implementing this without breaking the > behavior. For this we could use the new linkat interface which > would need a new flags parameter. If the new parameter is > AT_SYMLINK_FOLLOW the new behavior could be invoked. > > I do not want to introduce such a patch now. But we could add the > parameter now, just don't use it. The patch below would do this. > Can we get this late patch applied before the release more or less > fixes the syscall API? Please stop adding these crappy flags argument everywhere, they're also creaping like a cancer through the other *at stuff. Just make linkat do the righ thing per posix spec for link, and then you can implement a posix link based on it in glibc if the user compiles with XOPEN_SOURCE or whatever.