[linux-cifs-client] Re: [PATCH 08/10] cifs: remove cifs_readlink and CIFSSMBQueryReparseLinkInfo

[Jeff Layton]

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:27:55 -0500
Steve French <smfrench at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Jeff Layton <jlayton at redhat.com> wrote:
> > CIFSSMBQueryReparseLinkInfo is only called by cifs_readlink, and
> > cifs_readlink is never called by anything. A quick look at
> > CIFSSMBQueryReparseLinkInfo shows that it has several problems
> > with handling of endianness as well.
> 
> What happens when we read a Junction with current code then?
> 
> Windows allows users to create a "junction" (see the Windows utilities
> "linkd.exe",  "ln.exe" and "fsutil").  Junctions look a little like a
> symlink.  Although usually they have absolute paths, I think that they
> can be created with relative paths like a symlink.    We probably
> ought to make sure we can handle this before we remove this.
> 
> 

Why? This code is officially unused since there's no way to call into
it. I need to change the calling conventions for the unix symlink
function, and this code also calls that. I don't really think my time
is well spent fixing a dead code path.

If/when you decide to fix the junction parsing code, this patch could
be reverted. Until then, keeping this code around bloats out cifs.ko
and adds to the maintenance burden with no benefit.

-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton at redhat.com>