Re: [Quilt-dev] CVS test suite fixes

[John Vandenberg]

On 1/12/06, Jean Delvare <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> > Also, I would appreciate some assistance with one problem I found with
> > the previous local-quilt.diff submitted to this list.  After
> > compat/sendmail is created as a symlink to /usr/sbin/sendmail, if
> > Makefile is modified, the symbolic link is always regenerated because
> > make uses the date of the linked file(/usr/sbin/sendmail) rather than
> > the symlink(compat/sendmail).  This can be avoided by using the
> > --check-symlink-times option.
> >
> > I was not able to find any way that this option can be enabled from
> > within the distributed Makefile, so the need to use this additional
> > option would probably come up on the list a bit.  To avoid that, the
> > updated patch generates a virtual symlink as a shell script, with a
> > restriction that only 9 parameters will be passed through.  I think I
> > may be able to remove that restriction by using: set -o noglob;
> > /bin/whatever $@, but I have yet to test that thoroughly.
> >
> > Can this be improved on?
>
> If your wrapper script is a bash script, you can use "$@" (note the
> quotes) to pass all the parameters through. This method shouldn't have
> any parameter count limit (except for the maximum size of the command
> line itself, of course).

If I use "$@", wont that pass all arguments as a single argument, e.g.

sed -e 's/foo/bar/' file

becomes

sed '-e s/foo/bar/ file'

> That being said, this approach promises to be less efficient than a
> symbolic link, as you will have to fire up bash one additional time
> each time you start the given program. We'd better avoid that, if
> possible.

This problem only exists when running the tests locally; the installed
version will utilise a symlink as it currently does.

--
John