Support following symbolic links to *files* as well

[mirabilos]

From my analysis of the problem in codehaus-plexus/plexus-archiver#160 (comment) changes in plexus-io are needed to support following symbolic links to files (not directories).

We can track the plexus-io part here.

[mirabilos]

I think I’ve got it; for plexus-io even configurable (following the already extant follow-symlinks setting). I’ll provide a PR shortly.

[plamentotev]

While it may not be intuitive I think PlexusIoFileResourceCollection works as intended. This collection return a collection of files as they are on the file system. This includes symlinks. It is up to the caller to decide how to handle symlinks. The flag affect only dirs as it affects which files are going to be included.

I think it would be better to keep the collection as it is, but while compressing Plexus Archiver should follow the symlink instead of adding it to the archive..

[mirabilos]

I don’t think so. It already includes a “follow symlinks” mode, which just doesn’t work “right”, it only follows symlinks to directories, which I haven’t seen anywhere else.

I replied in more detail in codehaus-plexus/plexus-archiver#160 (comment)

[plamentotev]

Now that I had time to look again on the pull request it does make sense. I'm only concerned that it changes the default behavior of a code that existed for quite some time. Callers that haven't set the follow sym links flag at all will not get the sym links. That may break existing applications without them even knowing they are affected by the change.

[mirabilos]

Plamen Totev dixit:

Now that I had time to look again on the pull request it does make sense. I'm only concerned that it changes the default behavior of a code that existed for quite some time. Callers that haven't set the

Yes, it’s probably a major version number bump, so that callers can adapt. That doesn’t mean it should not be done, right? ☻

follow sym links flag at all will not get the sym links. That may break existing applications without them even knowing they are affected by the change.

Right. Raising the major version number should make people look up the reason in the release notes which would mention this. I just hope that newer versions of the affected plugins will then indeed make this configurable. Even discussing a similar issue in https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MRESOURCES-237 made it clear that the behaviour of following vs. copying the symlink as-is must be configurable, as both have use cases that are equally valid. bye, //mirabilos -- Infrastrukturexperte • tarent solutions GmbH Am Dickobskreuz 10, D-53121 Bonn • http://www.tarent.de/ Telephon +49 228 54881-393 • Fax: +49 228 54881-235 HRB AG Bonn 5168 • USt-ID (VAT): DE122264941 Geschäftsführer: Dr. Stefan Barth, Kai Ebenrett, Boris Esser, Alexander Steeg