Re: [PATCH] Add ability to print ACL's from ls

[Bruno Haible]

Hello David,

> The following patches add support for printing ACL's via 'ls -e/-E'.
> This is supported on platforms that have some sort of acl_to_text
> function, which is most of the platforms that the acl module supports.

Unfortunately, having GNU 'ls' (and maybe later GNU 'chmod') use the
platform's native syntax for ACLs does not allow the user to use the
same commands on different platforms, and does not allow for platform
independent scripts.

There was agreement in the thread starting at [1] that the GNU coreutils
should use a platform independent syntax for ACLs.

The next step IMO should be to formulate this syntax.

Paul Eggert proposed to look at the Solaris syntax. I find it important
to look at the MacOS X syntax, because MacOS X ACLs are more flexible
than old-style POSIX ACLs. And of course we need to consider the syntax
of Linux ACLs according to Andreas Grünbacher's library.

Bruno

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2008-06/msg00090.html