Re: Question about enable-absolute-paths option

From: Guillermo <gdiazhartusch_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2018 14:44:10 -0300

El mar., 4 sept. 2018 a las 2:07, Shengjing Zhu escribió:
>
> And I'm mostly agree that binaries like cd/umask/wait are not POSIX
> compatible[1]
>
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=906250#22

This bug is closed, and there is now an execline package in Debian
Sid, so it seems that some resolution has been settled on. However,
I'd still like to understand what's the interpretation of the
'exec-ability' requirement raised in message #22, and its connection
with the placement of execline binaries. The wording used in the
contained links to POSIX confuses me. If someone feels like
explaining, to be concrete, what should a compliant 'execution
environment' do when presented a C program that contains an
execlp("cd", "cd" "blahblah", (char *)0) or execlp("umask", "umask",
"022", (char *)0) call?

1) Make the function call behave as the cd or umask utilities
specified by the standard, with no regard to the value of PATH. In
other words, never execute an execline binary.
2) Guarantee the existence of some value of PATH that makes the
function call behave as the cd or umask utilities specified by the
standard. In other words, may or may not execute an execline binary,
but it must be possible to set PATH in a way that makes the call
behave as 'standard cd' or 'standard umask' -which the message admits
cannot happen in current Debian anyway-.
3) None of the above.

(Message #37 is mostly about Debian policy, so no comment on that)

Thanks,
G.
Received on Sun Sep 09 2018 - 17:44:10 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Sun May 09 2021 - 19:38:49 UTC