Hi Paul, * Paul Eggert wrote on Sun, Oct 02, 2005 at 11:46:06PM CEST: > Ralf Wildenhues <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > * lib/autotest/general.m4 (AT_INIT): Make test dir content > > writable before removing. > > I have a few qualms about invoking "chmod u+w" as I worry it might run > afoul of people who have deliberately set up their directories in > weird ways.
Erm, the setup of the test directories (testsuite.dir/NNN) is pretty irrelevant _before_ the test run: it is supposed to be erased. I'm not arguing for changing the modes of any file outside of this. Maybe I haven't understood what you are thinking of here? > coreutils addresses this problem by putting traps in its test cases, > so that the traps can do a chmod u+w; does that work for you? That would change the mode _after_ running the test; at the time, the innocent user goes and tries to explore the test directory to find out what went wrong. If I wouldn't have known before what magic `make distcheck' does with tree writability, in this case such a trap would have left me out in the cold, with no clue. So no, I don't think that is a very good idea -- on the contrary, Autotest should leave the test dir alone after the test, so as to preserve as much evidence as possible. In the interest of other situations -- it may be necessary to change some extended attributes or such to be able to clean up the test dir -- maybe Autotest should provide a macro to the developer to be executed before cleaning the test dir? That way no authority is given up lightly. I guess we have to put in the trap in order to provide backward compatibility with 2.59, but only for that reason. > chmod -R is portable these days, by the way. Ah, thanks. Cheers, Ralf
