absolute path errors in 2.1.16

[Chip Seraphine]

I am seeing apparently-spurious errors like this:

cf:cfengine::/var/cfengine/inputs/cf.networkinfo:219: 
ExecResult(/command) must specify an absolute path

The command in question is fine:

master1_hostline=
                 ( ExecResult(${workdir}/bin/get-hostline master1 
master1) )


The workdir variable is unconditionally set earlier in the run (in 
cfagent.conf), and this line has never thrown errors in the past.

The error seems to come from HandleExecResult in function.c, which does 
a hard check to see if the first character in the *args string is a 
'/'.    This appears to be part of the parser, and my guess is that it 
fires before variable expansion takes place.  (A similar situation might 
exist in HandleFunctionExec in the same file.)

If I am guessing correctly, then presumably variable expansion needs to 
take place earlier.  If that can't be done, an obvious (but hacky) 
workaround would be to allow $ followed by some manner of open-brace as 
an alternative to a slash character.

I commented out the check in my own setup and  recompiled, and the 
problem went away.

Personally I'm of the opinion that the forced-abspath stuff is much more 
pain than it is worth....   if we can't trust the maintainer to set up 
his PATH correctly, we are probably already doomed :)