symlink problems with mac os

[Per Bothner]

On 10/22/2017 11:15 AM, Björn Raupach wrote:
>> On 22. Oct 2017, at 19:40, Per Bothner <per@bothner.com> wrote:

>>> The reason for the readlink to handle the case that you install kawa
>>> as a symlink for example /usr/local/bin/kawa -> /opt/kawa-3.0/bin/kawa .
>>> I think that is useful to support - and it doesn't work without the -f.
>>
>> On second though that use-case can be handled just as well with creating
>> an executable file /usr/local/bin/kawa containing:
>>
>> exec /opt/kawa-3.0/bin/kawa "$@“
> 
> Not sure about this. Probably wouldn’t help my case. What if I don’t install in /opt/kawa-3.0?

That is just an example.  I'm talking about either
(a)  building from source (and then running in-place without doing 'make install') or
(b) unzip the binary distribution in some directory - for example /opt/kawa-3.0.

After that you might want to put 'kawa' in your PATH.  Instead if adding another entry
to your PATH variable, you can either:
(1) create a 'kawa' symlink from a directory in your PATH to (for example)
/opt/kawa-3.0/bin/kawa, or
(2) create a small shell file containing 'exec /opt/kawa-3.0/bin/kawa "$@“'
in a directory in your path.

Option (1) requires 'readlink -f' to work - but option (2) doesn't.

(Assuming I fix thing so $builddir/bin/kawa is no longer a symlink.)

-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/