[pacman-dev] FS#7484 - pacman clobbers directory symlinks.

[Xavier]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 05:58:20PM -0400, Dan McGee wrote:
> On 7/12/07, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 05:47:43PM -0400, Dan McGee wrote:
> > > On 7/12/07, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 2. When extracting directories, we should compare the mode of the
> > > existing and the mode of the one to be extracted, and probably spit a
> > > warning if they are different so the user at least knows this could be
> > > an issue. I am not sure which set of permissions to go with, however.
> >
> > What do you mean in that last sentence ?
> 
> Should we assume the directory permissions in the package being
> installed are correct, or should we assume the permissions on the
> user's filesystem are correct?
> 
> Package:
> rw-r--r-- root root /foo
> Filesystem:
> rw-rw-r-- root fooey /foo
> 
> Which one do we go with?
> 

Ah ok.
Well Paul and Jeremy gave their opinion on this in the BR :
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7484#comment17621

"It seems in general dangerous to change the permissions of existing
directories by installing new packages, but it could break things either
way."

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7484#comment17623

"* directories are more likely than regular files to have user-modified
permissions/ownership -- having pacman force update of permissions/ownership
may undo something the user has carefully set up."

And both suggested to print a warning in this case, and you agreed on that
too ;)