Re: [PATCH] config.mak.uname: Define FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES for GNU/Hurd

[Jessica Clarke <jrtc27@jrtc27.com>]

On 22 Apr 2020, at 19:48, Brandon Casey <drafnel@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 9:41 AM Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Jessica Clarke wrote:
>> 
>>> GNU/Hurd is another platform that behaves like this. Set it to
>>> UnfortunatelyYes so that config directory files are correctly processed.
>>> This fixes the corresponding 'proper error on directory "files"' test in
>>> t1308-config-set.sh.
>>> 
>>> Thanks-to: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
>>> Signed-off-by: Jessica Clarke <jrtc27@jrtc27.com>
>>> ---
>>> config.mak.uname | 1 +
>>> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>> 
>> Reviewed-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
>> Thanks.
>> 
>>> diff --git a/config.mak.uname b/config.mak.uname
>>> index 0ab8e00938..3e526f6b9f 100644
>>> --- a/config.mak.uname
>>> +++ b/config.mak.uname
>>> @@ -308,6 +308,7 @@ ifeq ($(uname_S),GNU)
>>>      NO_STRLCPY = YesPlease
>>>      HAVE_PATHS_H = YesPlease
>>>      LIBC_CONTAINS_LIBINTL = YesPlease
>>> +     FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES = UnfortunatelyYes
>>> endif
>> 
>> I wonder why we set up this knob this way.  A lot of operating systems
>> support fopen(..., "r") of a directory --- wouldn't it make sense for
>> FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES to be the default and for users on stricter
>> platforms to be able to set FREAD_DOES_NOT_READ_DIRECTORIES if they
>> want to speed Git up by taking advantage of their saner fread?
> 
> At the time it was written, the assumption in the code was that an
> fread() on a directory would produce a failure, and that that was the
> sane and common behavior. fopen(..., "r") on a directory was expected
> to be successful on most platforms, but does fail on some. I don't
> recall if it failed on any of the platforms I had access to at the
> time (Solaris, IRIX), but it does fail on Windows. So I introduced
> this feature that would make fopen() fail when opening a directory for
> use on the platforms where fread() of a directory did not fail,
> instead of trying to wrap fread().
> 
> I just looked in config.mak.uname, and I'm surprised to see
> FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES set for so many platforms. And it's set for
> Linux and Darwin?!?!? Junio added it for Darwin
> (8e178ec4d072da4cd8f4449e17aef3aff5b57f6a) and Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy
> added it for Linux (e2d90fd1c33ae57e4a6da5729ae53876107b3463), but
> also seemed to mistake the intention of FREAD_FREADS_DIRECTORIES as
> being about the fopen(..., "r") of a directory rather than about an
> fread() of a directory.
> 
> I just wrote a test program and tested on Linux, Darwin, and Windows.
> Linux and Darwin both succeed to fopen() a directory and fail to
> fread() it, as expected. Windows fails to fopen() a directory.
> 
> I notice this earlier commit mentions a failure of t1308
> (4e3ecbd43958b1400d6cb85fe5529beda1630e3a). I wonder if this is the
> reason FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES was added to so many platforms?

Then the current autoconf test is wrong and likely causing confusion:

> AC_RUN_IFELSE(
>         [AC_LANG_PROGRAM([AC_INCLUDES_DEFAULT],
>                 [[
>                 FILE *f = fopen(".", "r");
>                 return f != NULL;]])],
>         [ac_cv_fread_reads_directories=no],
>         [ac_cv_fread_reads_directories=yes])
> ])

Jess