Re: coreutils-5.92:du not AIX largefile safe --

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Townsend <address@hidden> wrote:
> 1) On line 15, "'expensive'" should be "'very expensive'"?

When I wrote the comment, it wasn't intended to refer to a script name.
I've changed it.

> 2) Script writes "big" relative to current directory.  Unfortunately,
>    not all filesystems have that much free space so I added a TMPDIR
>    variable that can point at a filesystem that has sufficient space.  I
>    don't know how it should be set though (../very-expensive maybe??).

That was deliberate.
I didn't think it was worth the complication to try any partition
other than the current one, especially for a test that few will
want or be able to run.  Even I don't run this test all the time.
I figured that those who really want to run it, can build and run
`make check' on a partition where there's enough space.  But that's
not a good attitude :-)

So, if you're interested in pursuing it, it would be better to provide a
more user-friendly method.  You might want to use an approach like that
used in misc/tac-continue.  It does something similar, since it needs
a partition that is full (data-wise), but that still has free inodes.
If you have such a partition, you can tell that test about it by setting
the FULL_PARTITION_TMPDIR envvar, e.g.,

  FULL_PARTITION_TMPDIR=/full make check


Don't use $TMPDIR, because it's not uncommon to have it
pointing to a memory-backed file system -- not the place you'd
want to create a 2GB temporary file, even if it'd fit.

> 3) Wouldn't `cmp -s' be better?  Without the "-s", you see the `cmp'
>    message about differences at "char 1, line 1".

No, since some versions of cmp don't support the -s option.
Actually, diff would be better, but cmp is more portable.

> Below I have delineated the mods I made.

Thanks.