Subject: bug#49261: 28.0.50; File Locking Breaks Presumptuous Toolchains

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2021 15:58:21 +0300

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2021 12:55:55 +0200
> Cc: [email-masked]
> 
> Mallchad Skeghyeph <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> >  ...even if the lock files are symlinks (which they not necessarily
> >  are), we need to handle the case of several files with identical
> >  basenames in different directories.  (Their being symlinks is
> >  unimportant, because the target of the symlink doesn't exist.)
> >
> > Actually, is there even a good reason to keep relying on symlinks in the future?
> > Considering that.. ahem, some Operating Systems cannot do symlinks for the
> > user?
> > If it were treated as a normal file you could load it up with whatever metadata
> > you want.
> 
> Using a normal file should also work, I think?  But it'd be slightly
> less efficient on some common popular file systems.

We already use regular files on systems on which symlinks are either
unsupported or otherwise problematic.