patch 4 debuginfod: symlink following mode

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Fri, 2019-11-15 at 13:31 -0500, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> > > In order to support file/rpm archives that are organized via symlink
> > > trees, add an "-L" option to debuginfod, meaning about the same as for
> > > find(1) or ls(1): to traverse rather than ignore symlinks.
> > 
> > Could you give an example of when exactly this is necessary?
> 
> Because some file/rpm archievs are organized via symlink trees. :-)
> For example, a build system may have
> 
>        /packages/N/V/R/ARCH/*.rpm files, which are a legion
> plus   /compose/F30/SPIN/ARCH/ directories, which contain 
>                                symlinks into the former
> or package archives stored over multiple NFS mounts, whose
> contents are interleaved via symlinks.
> 
> > I assume that it isn't really necessary for rpm archives, you probably
> > don't want to follow any symlinks from an archive that point to
> > something outside the archive, and you will see all files in the
> > archive anyway. So following symlinks doesn't seem helpful there.
> 
> These are not symlinks WITHIN rpms.  These are symlinks encountered
> during filesystem traversal looking for RPMs.
> 
> > Also why combine symlink following with cross-device searches?
> > Shouldn't that be separate options?
> 
> They could be.  They seemed to go well together in the cases I've seen
> and thought about.  Would you like another option now?

No, I understand the use case now. And you are right it makes sense to
combine them for such cases.

But I still think it would be better to split the directory full of
rpms case from the directory full of individual file cases. The option
makes perfect sense for the case you show, but I think it is not really
appropriate to mix it with the individual exec/debug and source files
case.

Cheers,

Mark