Re: Git 1.3.2 on Solaris

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Tue, 23 May 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> I absolutely agree. That is why the OS has a "access()" system call. It's 
> there to ask the OS whether the file is executable (or readable/writable).

Side note: I'm not claiming that "access()" is a wonderful thing. I do 
agree that we might want to replace it with something else inside of git, 
if only because of portability concerns.

So I'm really just ranting my normal "standards lawyerese doesn't mean 
much" rant..

(access() also has other isses: X_OK obviously means different things for 
directories and for regular files, so quite often you need to do a stat() 
on the thing _anyway_ just to determine whether it's "executable in the 
'execve()' sense" or "executable in the 'path lookup' sense").

		Linus