(change_file_owner): Add a comment.

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/chown-core.c b/src/chown-core.c
index 5df0c1860..821adfe76 100644
--- a/src/chown-core.c
+++ b/src/chown-core.c
@@ -226,6 +226,16 @@ change_file_owner (FTS *fts, FTSENT *ent,
 		  /* Applying chown to a symlink and expecting it to affect
 		     the referent is not portable.  So instead, open the
 		     file and use fchown on the resulting descriptor.  */
+		  /* FIXME: but on some systems (e.g. Linux-2.1.81 and newer),
+		     using chown is much better, since it *does* follow
+		     symlinks, and the open/fchown approach fails when
+		     the file is not readable.  This looks like a fine case
+		     for another chown wrapper.  In any case, this code can
+		     clobber errno, so fix it or remove it.
+		     Related: with a proper autoconf test -- is this possible,
+		     without root permissions or a guarantee of more than
+		     one group? -- the lchown wrapper may just end up
+		     calling chown on some systems.  */
 		  int fd = open (file, O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK | O_NOCTTY);
 		  fail = (fd == -1 ? 1 : fchown (fd, new_uid, new_gid));
 		  if (fd != -1)