From: Junio C Hamano Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 17:48:20 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] config.mak.uname: Define FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES for GNU/Hurd Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20200422164150.GA140314@google.com> Jonathan Nieder writes: > I wonder why we set up this knob this way. A lot of operating systems > support fopen(..., "r") of a directory --- wouldn't it make sense for > FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES to be the default and for users on stricter > platforms to be able to set FREAD_DOES_NOT_READ_DIRECTORIES if they > want to speed Git up by taking advantage of their saner fread? It would have been helped to hear that when we accepted cba22528 (Add compat/fopen.c which returns NULL on attempt to open directory, 2008-02-08). Perhaps back then it was more common not to allow fopen() on a directory? I dunno. Because we do not very often hear "oops, this system also needs the READS_DIRECTORIES knob set" these days, I consider it a fair game to toggle the polarity of it, once the Hurd patch that started this thread lands, as the vicinity of the code would become quiescent again.