Re: Bug#294206: stat(1) unclear about block size

[Paul Eggert]

Jeroen van Wolffelaar <address@hidden> writes:

> I like the (latest) patch from Paul Eggert more, although I'm not sure
> people will be going to understand the term "fundamental block size"
> immediately.

They are the name POSIX gave us; there are some advantages to sticking
with the standard names.  The parenthetical comments (e.g., "(for
block counts)") attempt to clarify them a bit.

> I think it's a bit betrayal to the user to just copy f_bsize if
> f_frsize is unavailable,

There's precedent for this in lib/fsusage.c.  As I understand it, it
doesn't break anything on standard hosts, and it works around some
incompatibilities in some nonstandard hosts.  If it breaks something
on other nonstandard hosts then we can look into the problem at that
point.

> By the way, I didn't yet test the patch, it'd be relatively much work
> for me, but I'm willing to do so if really nobody else seems able to
> test this.

I can't easily test it on anything like your platform, so it would be
useful if you gave it a whirl.  You should be able to do this by
downloading this:

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.3.0.tar.gz

applying the stat.c patch, and running "sh configure; make; make check".