Re: Bug#249177: coreutils: chown is not POSIXLY_CORRECT even when the variable is set

[Jim Meyering]

Michal Politowski <address@hidden> wrote:
> Package: coreutils
> Version: 5.0.91-2
> Severity: normal
>
> chown user symlink
> will change the owner of the symbolic link itself, not the file it is
> pointing to.
> Using the option --dereference is necessary to change the owner of the file.
> Setting POSIXLY_CORRECT doesn't change this, and POSIX mandates changing
> owner of the file not the link unless -h option is specified.

Thanks for reporting that.
POSIX does seem to require that chown's --dereference behavior
be the default.  I'll probably change it for the next upstream
coreutils release.

The same applies to chgrp.