On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 03:34:18PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: > * Rich Felker: > > > coreutils should be opting to use the system-provided lchmod, which is > > safe, and correctly handling error returns (silently treating > > EOPNOTSUPP as success) rather than as hard errors. > > glibc's lchmod always returns ENOSYS (except on Hurd). I don't know how > lchmod is used in coreutils, but I suspect it is not particularly > useful.
When preserving permissions (cp -p, archive extraction, etc.), you want lchmod to work correctly just for the purpose of *not* following the link and thereby unwantedly changing the permissions of the link target. But, fchmodat with AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW works just as well and is standard, and that's really what coreutils should be using. Rich
