Subject: Re: bug#33573: Patch to replace symlinks with files

From: Bogdan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 13:04:53 +0100

Karl Berry <[email-masked]>, Fri Dec 30 2022 00:33:03 GMT+0100 
(Central European Standard Time)
>      Another simple patch from my side: when '--copy' given to
>      '--add-missing', copy the standard files even if symlinks already exist.
> 
> I am not sure about changing the behavior here. Although the behavior
> you propose is plausible, I fear that people might depend or expect on
> failure if symlinks exist. It doesn't seem bad to me to require the user
> to clean up their own symlinks, instead of assuming the overwriting
> should be done. There's no way to know what the situation really is.
> 
> What I suggest is making the new behavior of deleting existing symlinks
> iff -f is *also* given.  If the user says "force" and "copy" then ok, we
> can figure they're asking for what they're getting.
> 
> Wdyt? --thanks, karl.

Hi.

Sure, no problem from my side. This is actually already the current 
behavior, from what I see (but I didn't check in detail). Someone 
reported a bug for this, so I simply gave it a try.

The user has a point: --copy was given, but the files were not copied. 
This may be a bit confusing. But this depends on the point of view, I 
guess, and both behaviors have a point and can be correct, depending 
on who you're asking. We can as well leave the current behavior, as 
you say: make the user be clear about what they want and maybe allow 
Automake one day behave differently (like exit with an error if a 
symlink exists and -c given, but no -f, etc.).

Just maybe make something clearer in the documentation and/or the help 
message in such case, like:

--help:
[...]
-c, --copy             with -a, copy missing files if they or their 
symlinks don't already exist (default is symlink)

-f, --force-missing    force update of standard files (with -c copies 
the files even if symlinks exist)

Automake docs:

‘-c’
‘--copy’
      When used with ‘--add-missing’, causes installed files to be
      copied if files or symlinks don't already exist.  The default is 
to make a symbolic link.

> P.S. I hope to reply to your other patch in the next day or two.

No problem - thanks for confirmation that they actually arrived. I 
thought the mails got lost in some black hole, because I'm not 
subscribed and I didn't see them in the mailing list's archive :).

-- 
Regards - Bogdan ('bogdro') D.                 (GNU/Linux & FreeDOS)
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