> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Meyering [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 10:11 PM
> To: Alexandre Oliva
> Cc: Bob Friesenhahn; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Automake security problem
>
>
> Alexandre Oliva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> | On Mar 2, 2000, Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> | > That'd be ok if there were a compelling reason to
> continue using such
> | > hacks, but in any case, please don't advocate use of
> -exec in cases
> | > like this. Using xargs is more efficient:
> |
> | But xargs is not as portable: it's not available on all
> platforms, it
> | may fail if there are too many too long pathnames, and it may find
> | trouble with filenames containing blanks (but, admittedly, so would
> | make and automake), so I just played on the safe side.
>
> Your arguments don't hold water.
> As you know, this is for the `make dist' rule. I consider that
> to be one of those rules that should work well for a *maintainer*,
> not necessarily for the average user. If a maintainer doesn't have
> a working version of xargs, then they should install it. Similarly,
> if someone builds a distribution for which `find|xargs
> whatever' fails,
> then they have much larger problems. We should compromise quality
> only when necessary.
I think I will agree on this; anyway I don't see any system where I don't
have a working xargs for quite a long time...
>
> I'm not aware of any way in which `too many too long pathnames' can
> cause problems with xargs. Would you please elaborate?
> Even with GNU xargs?
>
This problem is NOT with xargs; it's with the generated command line (which
is usually limited to 10240 characters by the underlying system). Hopefully
the solution IS in xargs: just use for example "find <something> | xargs
-n10 <whatever you need to do>", and you should have path names of
consistently more than 1024 characters to have any problem (I persoinally
have -n64 wired in my fingers...) but you get a 10-times increase in speed
WRT -exec in find :-)
--------------------------------------------
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Microprocess Ingéniérie
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