Subject: Re: bug#39929: coreutils-8.32 fails to build on aarch64

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 17:27:16 -0800

On 3/5/20 1:43 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:

> Why is this code even there at all? If readdir(3) says that the current 
> directory has no entries, shouldn't 'ls' just say that? Why should ls 
> report an error simply because the current directory isn't reachable 
> from the filesystem? Whether the current directory is unreachable has 
> nothing to do with ls's job, which is to report whether the current 
> directory has entries.

Attached is a proposed patch to fix this.
>From 511d0c323bc90a0ab7e8f3672b07a1144885a9e8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 17:25:29 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] ls: restore 8.31 behavior on removed directories

* NEWS: Mention this.
* src/ls.c: Do not include <sys/sycall.h>
(print_dir): Don't worry about whether the directory is removed.
* tests/ls/removed-directory.sh: Adjust to match new (i.e., old)
behavior.
---
 NEWS                          |  6 ++++++
 src/ls.c                      | 22 ----------------------
 tests/ls/removed-directory.sh | 10 ++--------
 3 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 30 deletions(-)

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index fdc8bf5db..653e7178b 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -2,6 +2,12 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-
 
 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
 
+** Changes in behavior
+
+  On GNU/Linux systems, ls no longer issues an error message on
+  directory merely because it was removed.  This reverts a change
+  that was made in release 8.32.
+
 
 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.32 (2020-03-05) [stable]
 
diff --git a/src/ls.c b/src/ls.c
index 24b983287..4acf5f44d 100644
--- a/src/ls.c
+++ b/src/ls.c
@@ -49,10 +49,6 @@
 # include <sys/ptem.h>
 #endif
 
-#ifdef __linux__
-# include <sys/syscall.h>
-#endif
-
 #include <stdio.h>
 #include <assert.h>
 #include <setjmp.h>
@@ -2896,7 +2892,6 @@ print_dir (char const *name, char const *realname, bool command_line_arg)
   struct dirent *next;
   uintmax_t total_blocks = 0;
   static bool first = true;
-  bool found_any_entries = false;
 
   errno = 0;
   dirp = opendir (name);
@@ -2972,7 +2967,6 @@ print_dir (char const *name, char const *realname, bool command_line_arg)
       next = readdir (dirp);
       if (next)
         {
-          found_any_entries = true;
           if (! file_ignored (next->d_name))
             {
               enum filetype type = unknown;
@@ -3018,22 +3012,6 @@ print_dir (char const *name, char const *realname, bool command_line_arg)
           if (errno != EOVERFLOW)
             break;
         }
-#ifdef __linux__
-      else if (! found_any_entries)
-        {
-          /* If readdir finds no directory entries at all, not even "." or
-             "..", then double check that the directory exists.  */
-          if (syscall (SYS_getdents, dirfd (dirp), NULL, 0) == -1
-              && errno != EINVAL)
-            {
-              /* We exclude EINVAL as that pertains to buffer handling,
-                 and we've passed NULL as the buffer for simplicity.
-                 ENOENT is returned if appropriate before buffer handling.  */
-              file_failure (command_line_arg, _("reading directory %s"), name);
-            }
-          break;
-        }
-#endif
       else
         break;
 
diff --git a/tests/ls/removed-directory.sh b/tests/ls/removed-directory.sh
index e8c835dab..fe8f929a1 100755
--- a/tests/ls/removed-directory.sh
+++ b/tests/ls/removed-directory.sh
@@ -26,20 +26,14 @@ case $host_triplet in
   *) skip_ 'non linux kernel' ;;
 esac
 
-LS_FAILURE=2
-
-cat <<\EOF >exp-err || framework_failure_
-ls: reading directory '.': No such file or directory
-EOF
-
 cwd=$(pwd)
 mkdir d || framework_failure_
 cd d || framework_failure_
 rmdir ../d || framework_failure_
 
-returns_ $LS_FAILURE ls >../out 2>../err || fail=1
+ls >../out 2>../err || fail=1
 cd "$cwd" || framework_failure_
 compare /dev/null out || fail=1
-compare exp-err err || fail=1
+compare /dev/null err || fail=1
 
 Exit $fail
-- 
2.24.1