[Netatalk-devel] A proposed alteration to permissions

[Marc M. <it...@ma...>]

Netatalk contains an "accidental feature" in that a read-only file
contained within a writable directory can't be deleted.  Any attempt to
do so returns a server error.  This is different from a *locked* file in
that the lock is stored in the .AppleDouble resource fork directory and
though it's treated as a read-only file, it's not marked read-only from
the standpoint of the shell.

Typical Unix behavior is that if the directory is writable, the file
should be deletable, even if the file is marked read-only
(deleting a file only adjusts the directory table anyhow).  MacOS seems to
agree.  

Peter Westlake has e-mailed me a patch to fix this so that it behaves as
Unix and MacOS expects it to, but as I can see some advantages to
controlling read-only access from the Unix side.  

My instinct would be to add in the patch as enabled by default (since it
restores expected behavior), make it optionally removable by the configure
script, and disabled if dropkludge is turned on (since dropkludge is
designed to fix this behavior in another way).  Any arguments?

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