Re: fts finds no files under mingw

[kodis]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2009 at 05:08:41PM +0100, Jim Meyering wrote:
> address@hidden wrote:
> > It looks like the file descriptor returned by dirfd is used mainly by
> > fts_safe_changedir to allow fts to work correctly even when parts of
> > the file system are changed while being traversed.  I wonder if a
> > fallback to the less robust changing directory by name would be the
> > appropriate fix here?
> 
> Trying to do without a file descriptor looks like it'd add too
> much complexity in already-hairy code.  Not worth it just for mingw.

Yes, understood.  I agree.

> If you're interested in pursuing it, I'd suggest trying harder to get a
> file descriptor.  I.e., on mingw, if dirfd returns -1, resort to calling
> openat or open on the directory name

Unfortunately, I've pursued it far enough to determine that calling
open() on a directory results in a "permission denied" error, so it
looks like that approach isn't going to work out.

I'll go through the mingw runtime to see what would be involved in
exporting a file descriptor in the DIR structure, and also see what
the Cygwin crew have done in this area, but it's beginning to look
like I'll have to track down or write a simple path name based file
tree walker.  Thanks for helping to identify the problem nonetheless.

BTW, it looks like the more Posixly correct action for dirfd to take
when no file descriptor will ever be available is to set errno to
ENOTSUP prior to returning -1.  Just something to consider.

-- John Kodis.