Re: pkg/43398 (Failed create wrapper due to missing hard link support on Haiku OS)

[David Holland <dholland-pbugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR pkg/43398; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland-pbugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: pkg/43398 (Failed create wrapper due to missing hard link
 support on Haiku OS)
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 07:31:38 +0000

 On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 05:50:00AM +0000, OBATA Akio wrote:
  >  > State-Changed-From-To: open->closed
  >  > State-Changed-By: dholland%NetBSD.org@localhost
  >  > State-Changed-When: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 09:18:32 +0000
  >  > State-Changed-Why:
  >  > fixed by submitter in 2010
  >  
  >  It is a workaround, not a fix.
 
 I dunno, it seems like a fix to me - the platform doesn't support hard
 links, so add a flag to not use them.
 
  >  I want to know "Who require hard link".
  >  For example, pkgsrc has "COMPILER_USE_SYMLINKS" and "yes" by default.
  >  So I have no idea why "hard link is the default" here.
 
 If COMPILER_USE_SYMLINKS is turned off, what you get isn't a hard link
 but a sh script that execs the main wrapper. Don't ask me why that's
 a useful mode, but it doesn't seem particularly related.
 
 Anyway, as far as why... I dunno, but my guess would be: hard links
 are slightly faster to load, remember, and when running the wrappers
 any little bit helps.
 
 Also, for anything that's a make target, using symlinks always raises
 some issues about whether make inspects the timestamp on the link or
 the timestamp on the file. Not inviting such trouble is a reason to
 use hard links.
 
 But ultimately there's no reason *not* to use hard links when they
 work. Instead of having a knob to set it might be tidier to do
 
    ${LN} -f $$wrapper ${.TARGET} || \
    ${LN} -sf $$wrapper ${.TARGET} || \
    ${CP} $$wrapper ${.TARGET}
 
 so it works transparently and also on platforms that don't have either
 hard links or symlinks. But it probably doesn't matter much.
 
 -- 
 David A. Holland
 dholland%netbsd.org@localhost