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Re: [RFC] DT_WHT
- From: Ben Hutchings <ben dot hutchings at codethink dot co dot uk>
- To: Rical Jasan <ricaljasan at pacific dot net>
- Cc: libc-alpha <libc-alpha at sourceware dot org>, Carlos O'Donell <carlos at redhat dot com>
- Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2018 01:50:40 +0000
- Subject: Re: [RFC] DT_WHT
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <280ca5c0-a265-9f58-2ddf-32a1ef130167@pacific.net> <1519921471.2786.1.camel@codethink.co.uk> <64ad30f8-b845-e237-c6e1-3db300c5f896@pacific.net>
On Thu, 2018-03-01 at 15:02 -0800, Rical Jasan wrote:
> On 03/01/2018 08:24 AM, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 02:16 -0800, Rical Jasan wrote:
> > > There is one undocumented DT_* macro in manual/filesys.texi: DT_WHT. It
> > > is defined in dirent/dirent.h and appears to be used once in io/fts.c:
> > >
> > > #if defined FTS_WHITEOUT && 0
> > > if (dp->d_type == DT_WHT)
> > > p->fts_flags |= FTS_ISW;
> > > #endif
> > >
> > > For an entry in the manual, I was thinking something along the lines of:
> > >
> > > "This macro is obsolete and has no effect. It was used to..."
> > >
> > > but I'm not sure what to say about what it was used for.
> >
> > [...]
> > > Lastly, I can't find a reference to it in any of the standards I've
> > > managed to obtain so far (not to say that's exhaustive at all). Is this
> > > also BSD?
> >
> > Some Linux filesystems support white-out directory entries for use with
> > union filesystems. At least the coda and xfs implementations of
> > getdents() appear to be capable of setting d_type to DT_WHT.
>
> The code as-is isn't used, though. Other "#if ... 0" blocks also use
> some apparently whiteout-related macros that aren't defined anywhere.
>
> Do you think instead of removing the unused code it should be changed to
> actually do something?
I have no opinion on that code, but it sounded like you proposed to
remove the macro definition too. I wanted to point out that the macro
is meaningful and may be useful to applications.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
Software Developer, Codethink Ltd.