bug#62572: cp --no-clobber behavior has changed

[Pádraig Brady]

On 01/04/2023 00:29, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 2023-03-31 14:32, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>
> > Perhaps we should support:
> >     --no-clobber[={skip, fail (default)}]
> >
> > so then users can at least easily change -n to --no-clobber=skip
> > to get the old behavior?
> >
> > An alternative would be to augment the --update option to support:
> >     --update[={none, older (default)}]
> > where --update=none would be the equivalent of the old -n behavior.
>
> The latter sounds a bit better but I suppose either would work. We could
> generalize it a bit further, e.g.:
>
>     --skip-diagnose[={yes,no}]
>        Whether to diagnose a copying action being skipped.
>     --skip-fail[={yes,no}]
>        Whether exit status should be 1 when skipping a copying action.
>
> Presumably similar options would apply to ln and mv.
>
> All these extra options might be overkill, though.
>
>
> > Perhaps we should also diagnose files skipped in the -n fail case,
> > to make it easier for users to see what the issue is.
>
> FreeBSD cp -n doesn't diagnose, and GNU cp -n has never diagnosed, so
> it's probably better to leave sleeping dogs lie.

OK first stab at --update=none support is attached.

cheers,
Pádraig

copy--update-none-patch
Description: Text document