REMOVAL OF SUBDIRECTORY:

"Another thing: even if the regex fails, the directory is removed (if exists). I don't think any existing directory should be removed without user confirmation."

Maneage has quite a few 'rm' statements - see https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15997 for a related task that could reduce the probability of bad 'rm's occurring. And 'makefiles' typically have non-interactive removes with 'make clean' or with some steps in build processes (to remove temporary build directories).

Arguments for retaining the deletion section:

• In this particular case, the subdirectory is only deleted if it appears to be empty (per 'ls -A').
• The user should expect Maneage to be responsible for files and directories within its source directory, so deletion of an extra directory inserted there should be acceptable.

Arguments for making the deletion interactive (possibly by default disabled):

• The user might wish to add some files and directories with the Maneage source directory, and even if a directory is empty, might still be annoyed at having it be deleted.
• A user could still use '< /dev/null' for remaining inputs and fall back to a default, without being forced to run ./project interactively.

There seem to be arguments both ways. This could possibly be split off as a separate bug or task.


SYMLINK DIRECTORY(IES):

A separate issue is that the current subdirectory test does not check all cases of subdirectoriness. E.g.

cd /home/user
ln -s mysymlink myproj
cd mysymlink
mkdir buildsubdir

In this case, /home/user/myproj/buildsubdir is in reality a subdirectory of /home/user/mysymlink, but 'configure.sh' will not detect that, since it only compares absolute paths (obtained with 'pwd' from the host OS), not dereferenced absolute paths.

This could as much be a feature as a bug :), but someone could split it off as a bug or task if s/he feels that it's worth handling in the long term.

The trailing dots weren't the problem, I also tried with absolute dirs and the result was the same. The problem is the missing slash at the end and the regex used to check, as Boud points out.

Another thing: even if the regex fails, the directory is removed (if exists). I don't think any existing directory should be removed without user confirmation.

Victor, thanks for the spotting this bug! Raúl: the problem is that currentdir

/home/username/niceprojects/project

is a substring of bdir

/home/username/niceprojects/project-build

Lines 923 or 930 convert from the relative directory to the absolute directory, so 'bdir' is absolute.

Victor, my guess is that your solution

grep '^'"$currentdir/"

may be OK, though I haven't checked this... One flaw would be that

/home/username/niceprojects/project/

is not a substring of

/home/username/niceprojects/project

so the project directory itself would be considered to "not be a subdirectory" and would be accepted as a build directory. So a more complex rule would seem to be needed.

Steps to reproduce

$ git clone https://git.maneage.org/project.git
$ cd project
$ ./project configure
...
Please enter the top build directory: ../project-build/

Expected result:
The directory is accepted, as it is not under the source-directory.

Current result:

 ** The build-directory cannot be under the source-directory.

The problem lies in comparison done in lines 939-940:reproduce/software/shell/configure.sh

 936         # If it is given, make sure it isn't a subdirectory of the source
 937         # directory.
 938         if ! [ x"$bdir" = x ]; then
 939             if echo "$bdir/" \
 940                     | grep '^'"$currentdir" 2> /dev/null > /dev/null; then

Using «grep '^'"$currentdir/"» fixes the problem (at least here).