Re: Possible bug in 'ln -s target dir' check code --

[Perry Hutchison]

"Townsend, Paul" <address@hidden> wrote:

> I am probably incorrectly interpreting the autoconf code that
> checks whether or not 'ln -s target dir' works.  It seems the
> check code is satisfied if
>
>   mkdir a
>
>   touch b
>
>   ln -s b a
>
> works without aborting.  On Ubuntu this does create a 'b' symlink
> in 'a' but that symlink is an infinite a/b->a/b.

AFAIK this has been the normal behavior of "ln -s" for as long
as symlinks have existed.  Indeed, because "ln -s" (unlike "ln"
without -s) does not stat the link target, it would still work
even if you left out the "touch b".

> In fact I think the only way to succeed is to use
>
>   ln -s $PWD/b a

or, better, "ln -s ../b a"

One way to help keep such things straight is to make symlinks only
in the current directory, e.g.

  ( cd a && ln -s ../b . )

> i.e., the ln app should be a heck of a lot smarter.

Arguably it should have originally been designed to issue a warning
if the target does not exist or if the result will be a loop, but to
change its behavior now would break backward compatibility.