Re: Recursion level of symlinks limitted to five?

david parsons (o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s)
11 Mar 1999 00:45:43 -0800

In article <linux.kernel.7v7lsqw43e.fsf@shine.twinsun.com>,
Junio Hamano <junio@twinsun.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "david" == david parsons <o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s> writes:
>
>david> In article <linux.kernel.7v4snva2bj.fsf@shine.twinsun.com>,
>david> Junio Hamano <junio@twinsun.com> wrote:
>>> Just out of curiosity, couldn't the resolving of symlinks all be
>>> done in the userland?
>
>david> A libc solution requires that everyone use a libc that's been
>david> hacked to do this, umm, method, and not everyone will hack their
>david> version of libc to do that.
>
>Agreed, and that's part of my idea. If non-insignificant number
>of people feel that 5 levels of symlinks are too few for
>real-world applications, either (1) they rewrite their
>application so that it catches ELOOP whenever they call system
>calls and resolve symlink as needed, or (2) fold such a
>check-and-recover scheme into the standard C library so that
>application programmers do not have to worry about this
>limitation over and over again. The key idea here is to fold
>this into the standard C library, not to replace the C library
>with your hacked one.

What's the standard C library?

libc4?
libc5?
glibc2?
glibc2.1?

I still use libc4, and as far as I know I'm the only person
on this planet that's actually maintaining it. What's the chance
of me putting such a hack in, given that my warranty will run out
in 30-50 years and I've already committed to, oh, about 80 years
worth of code?

>When that happens, there is no reason for the kernel to even
>support 5 levels of indirection. The kernel could even return
>ELOOP when it sees just one symbolic link and let the C library
>resolve the symlink.

If you're going to take out symbolic links, there's no point in even
pretending that symbolic links exist. Not everyone will use your C
library, and replacing symbolic links with Windows-style .lnk files
will cheerfully break a large body of code that non surprisingly
expects that a symbolic link will try really hard to look like a
file.

____
david parsons \bi/ everyone converts to the latest libc? Oh, that's
\/ a good one.

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