Re: Autotest: make test dir writable before removing

[Paul Eggert]

Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:

> Erm, the setup of the test directories (testsuite.dir/NNN) is pretty
> irrelevant _before_ the test run: it is supposed to be erased.

I was worried about the case where it wasn't erased, and where the
test contained a symlink to /usr/bin or something like that.
Admittedly I'm waving my hands a bit here; I don't know exactly what
I'm worried about.

> I guess we have to put in the trap in order to provide backward
> compatibility with 2.59, but only for that reason.

Yes, that's right.

Here are some other problems with that patch.

First, there are two other instances of the problem in general.m4:

        rm -f -r "$at_suite_dir" "$at_suite_log"

          $at_debug_p || rm -f -r $at_group_dir

Second, chmod u+w doesn't suffice for recursive removals.  You would
need at least chmod u+rwx.  The 'r' is needed so that rm can read the
directory to find out what its subfiles are.  The 'x' is needed so
that rm can search the directory to remove its subfiles.