On Sat, 6 May 2023, at 17:35, Pádraig Brady wrote: > As for -f implicitly bypassing this protection, > that seems too risky at this stage, as systems > could be dependent on this protection on dirs. > I.e. if we were to support this functionality > it would have to be under a new option as you suggest > (which does detract a bit from adding it).
I'd find it odd to write rm -rf DIR and expect the permissions to _protect_ certain files, but who knows what existing code is out there? Narrowly-scoped, we could have rm -r --chmod-unwritable-directories which does one specific thing. On the other hand, we could have rm -r --try-harder towards the idea of "if these files can be deleted, then delete them". What could this entail? chmod, chattr, setfacl, semanage, sudo?? It would be a shame for the perfect solution to be the enemy of the good, so if --try-harder were documented initially to chmod, but reserving the right to --try-harder in other ways as and when the need arises, would that fly? The footrake I always step on is expanded archives which for some reason have 0555 directories, and by the time I've noticed it's too late. Cheers, Phil
