Re: Storing permissions

From: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Date: Apr 17, 2005, 01:30 UTC
Message-ID: <20050416183023.0b27b3a4.pj@sgi.com>
In-Reply-To: <118833cc05041618017fb32a2@mail.gmail.com>

Morten wrote:

> It makes some sense in principle, but without storing what they mean
> (i.e., group==?) it certainly makes no sense.

There's no "they" there.

I think Martin's proposal, to which I agreed, was to store a _single_ bit. If any of the execute permissions of the incoming file are set, then the bit is stored ON, else it is stored OFF. On 'checkout', if the bit is ON, then the file permission is set mode 0777 (modulo umask), else it is set mode 0666 (modulo umask).

You might disagree that this is a good idea, but it certainly does 'make sense' (as in 'is sensibly well defined').

> I suspect a non-readable file would cause a bit of a problem in the low-level
> commands.

Probably so. If someone sets their umask 0333 or less, then they are either fools or QA (software quality assurance, or test) engineers.

-- 
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                  Paul Jackson <pj@engr.sgi.com> 1.650.933.1373, 1.925.600.0401