GNU bug report logs - #64785
Package: coreutils Version: 8.32-4+b1 program=mv

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From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>, Nir Oren <niro <at> edev.co>
Cc: 64785 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#64785: Package: coreutils Version: 8.32-4+b1 program=mv
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2023 10:37:36 -0700

On 2023-07-22 03:19, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Given the subtleties in this area,
> I'd be reluctant to adjust diagnostics here.

I looked into this a bit more. Given "mv dir e" where e/dir is an 
existing nonempty directory, 7th Edition Unix fails this way:

  mv: e/dir exists

Solaris 10 mv fails this way:

  mv: cannot rename dir to e/dir: File exists

Coreutils 5.93 fails this way:

  mv: cannot overwrite directory `e/dir'

Current coreutils fails this way:

  mv: cannot move 'dir' to 'e/dir': Directory not empty

macOS fails this way:

  mv: rename dir to e/dir: Directory not empty

If you ask me, none of these are all that good. Current coreutils and 
macOS give a confusing "Directory not empty" message (which directory?). 
Solaris 10 has a similar confusion. 7th Edition and coreutils 5.93 don't 
print strerror (errno).

All things considered, how about if we go back to something like 
coreutils 5.93, except output strerror (errno) too? That is, something 
like this:

  mv: cannot overwrite 'e/dir': Directory not empty

This focuses the user on the problem, avoiding confusion from the 
irrelevant source file name. We'd use this format if renameat fails with 
an errno that means the problem must be with the destination, and stick 
with the current format otherwise. Affected errno values would be 
EDQUOT, EISDIR, ENOSPC, EEXIST, ENOTEMPTY.

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