Symlinks in OS X (10.4.1)

[Wesley W. Terpstra]

On Oct 14, 2007, at 10:05 PM, dsp at gmx.org wrote:
>> Actually, this isn't quite true. osx has no lchmod, but if you set a
>> umask before creating the link, the permissions are set. So, as
>> opposed to ignoring the permissions, perhaps we should teach rsync
>> how to set them. I'll probably look at this as soon as I'm done
>> writing a patch for preserving the creation date.
>
> I know about the missing lchmod in OS X, but I don't really see a  
> need for
> it. Why can't a symlink just have a default permission of 0777? In  
> case the
> symlink gets dereferenced the target's permissions have to be  
> considered
> anyway. Of course it is cleaner to have them set properly, but if  
> they are
> just ignored it won't hurt either.

I believe in osx the symlink permissions have meaning (as opposed to  
linux). Eg:

-rwxrwxrwx bar
----r--r-- foo -> bar

In linux, 'cat foo' will work, in osx, it will fail. So, this meta- 
data has meaning, and to just replace it with 0777 will not give you  
a functionally equal copy.