On Mon, 30 Jan 2023 10:47:05 -0800, Stephen Gildea writes: >I have investigated the failure of the xlbiff tests with nmh 1.8RC2. >(This is https://bugs.debian.org/1029752)
stephen, thanks for that. >In one of the tests, xlbiff sets environment variable HOME to an empty >string and MH to a file containing a custom profile with an absolute Path. >With nmh 1.7.1, this environment works. > >With nmh 1.8RC2, this environment fails with the error message >"environment variable HOME is empty". *lightbulb* that error message comes from set_mypath in sbr/path.c, and the changelog tells me that "Author: Ralph Corderoy <[email protected]> Date: Thu May 13 13:46:20 2021 +0100 sbr/path.c: add set_mypath() to factor out repeated code." started to consolidate the various places that figure out a home for mh. however, set_mypath spot doesn't bother with $MH. a quick glance seems to indicate that only context_read in sbr/context_read.c looks at $MH for finding a home, but it does (well attempts) that just a few lines AFTER set_mypath has bailed out on it... i think we need to fix that sequence up a little :-) [handling of relative paths in the profile] >Whatever your decision, the choice should be documented. If you decide >to keep Path relative to HOME, then HOME should be required to be >non-empty if (and only if!) Path is relative. (nmh 1.7.1 used "/", >which seems wrong.) with my nitpicker's hat on: POSIX/SUS says HOME can be depended on. "HOME The system shall initialize this variable at the time of login to be a pathname of the user's home directory. See <pwd.h>." personally i'd say we should rely on posix and insist on not being $HOMEless. for me that would imply relatives should be relative to that, not the profile location. regards az -- Alexander Zangerl + GPG Key 2FCCF66BB963BD5F + https://snafu.priv.at/ `bastard operators from hell' anagrams to `shatterproof armored balls'. -- Cliff Miller
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