symbolic link traversal

[Boyd Waters]

Howdy all!

When you get finished playing with your shiny new iPhone, I have a  
maybe-stupid question about symbolic links:

1) Does MacPorts traverse symlinks in the middle of a path/like/this  
(where "like" would be a symlink)

I found a likely bit of Tcl code, and attempted to set it up to  
recursively resolve symlinks correctly during path traversal, but was  
not able to fix the problem.

I've been holding off on committing my Python ports -- which permit  
multiple, parallel versions of MacPorts to co-exist on a system -- but  
I would rather get this path-traversal thing addressed and then clean  
up the work-arounds in my ports.



A related issue: the binary PKG files that are produced by MacPorts  
are very dangerous for a similar reason: they don't resolve  
intermediate symlinks, either. Instead, the installer with *wipe out*  
the intermediate symlink, replacing it with a "real directory" --  
which of course only contains the stuff in that particular package.

For example,  /etc -- which is a symlink to /private/etc -- is  
*deleted* and *replaced* by an /etc that only contains an X11 subdir  
by the emacs binary pkg installer. Ouch!

2) I will try to clean up pkg-creation, unless someone else wants to  
hit it.
   Who maintains the PKG binary-installer part of MacPorts?

Thanks!


- boyd

Boyd Waters
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
middle of nowhere
New Mexico
USA