Re: Problem with symlinks and VPATH Builds

[Paul Eggert]

> From: "Mark D. Roth" <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:02:53 -0500
> 
> On Tue Jul 23 13:31 2002 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > I'd rather try $PWD, then pwd, and fall back on /bin/pwd only if the
> > other two methods don't work.  That way, the names will be nicer.
> 
> That won't solve the problem, specifically because $PWD and pwd give
> the "nice" path names.  The problem is that ksh is trying to interpret
> relative paths based on the string in $PWD rather than by actually
> traversing the ".." links

OK, now I understand the problem.  I also see that the problem occurs
even in absolute path names.  For example, with /bin/ksh on Solaris 8:

33-sic $ ls -ld /tmp/usr/local/src/dummy-0.1/../../common
drwxrwxr-x   3 eggert   eggert       183 Jul 24 01:54 
/tmp/usr/local/src/dummy-0.1/../../common
34-sic $ cd /tmp/usr/local/src/dummy-0.1/../../common
/bin/ksh: /tmp/usr/local/src/dummy-0.1/../../common:  not found

What a botch!


> address@hidden:/scratch/ac> head -1 usr/local/src/dummy-0.1/config.status 
> #! /bin/ksh
> 
> Is this what you're seeing as well?

No, mine uses /bin/bash and not /bin/ksh.  This probably explains it.
You don't have the SUNWbash package installed, so you don't have
/bin/bash.

However, I still don't like the solution of invoking /bin/pwd first,
for the reasons I mentioned earlier.  Why can't we fall back on
/bin/pwd only if the current method fails?  That way, only the poor
ksh users will be stuck with the problems of ugly names and/or
/bin/pwd failing.