Re: cygwin semantics of ..

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
...
> For the test mentioned above, a workaround in mkdir-p.c can be written
> that skips the optimization of an initial stat() on platforms where stat()
> can wrongly succeed (is there any other platform out there with this bug,
> or is it just cygwin); but it seems daunting to try and track down every
> utility that might fail because of a .. semantics bug.

Daunting, but above all, invasive and probably counterproductive,
assuming such a bug won't remain for long.  With Cygwin, such fundamental
bugs make it seem that is will be relatively easy to tell users they need
to upgrade to a newer version.

I agree with your implied conclusion that applications should
not try to work around this sort of misbehavior.

> Is the best course
> of action for coreutils to just update the testsuite to provide a filter
> test that SKIPs any tests that rely on POSIX semantics of .. filename
> resolution?

I would accept a patch that makes such a change.