Re: File permissions

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Thursday, September 27, 2001 at 03:25:16 (+0400), Tobias Brox wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: File permissions
>
> Could be - i.e. use a Makefile to describe how things should look at the
> target system.

Exactly.

> Then some external tool to import a target directory into a Makefile and
> source files might be a considered idea...

I'm not sure a tool like that would be of much use.  If you're going to
be managing these kinds of file attributes (e.g. permissions,
ownerships, links, etc.) then you really do have to know what you're
doing and you really should be able to concretely define the state you
want the target files to be in -- a tool that tried to do this for you
would have to assume you'd already set things up in the desired fashion
in the first place and as such would undoubtably only copy your mistakes.

The other problem with this kind of thing is that a tool really cannot
ever understand the goals of your policy (at least not without
significant external input from you, the expert, which kinda makes the
tool very redundant and useless), and as a result any such tool is
undoubtably going to have to take the "overkill" approach and thus it
will obscure the important information in amongst all the irrelevent
chaff that it must record.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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