makeself adds hard links to the archive

[jjvbsag]

To reproduce I created a short shell script

#!/bin/bash
export LANG=C
#
# get master
#
test -f makeself-master.zip || \
wget -O makeself-master.zip https://github.com/megastep/makeself/archive/master.zip

#
# extract
#
rm -rf makeself-master
unzip makeself-master.zip

#
# create sample dir
#
rm -rf sample-dir
mkdir -p sample-dir
echo "file1" > sample-dir/file1.txt
hexdump -C sample-dir/file1.txt > sample-dir/file1.dmp
echo "true" > sample-dir/install.sh

#
# create run file
#
rm -rf sample.run
makeself-master/makeself.sh sample-dir sample.run "Sample" install.sh

#
# check content
#
./sample.run --list

Output of list command is

Target directory: sample-dir
drwxrwxr-x itsme/itsme   0 2020-06-05 13:32 ./
-rw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   5 2020-06-05 13:32 ./install.sh
-rw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   6 2020-06-05 13:32 ./file1.txt
-rw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme  78 2020-06-05 13:32 ./file1.dmp
hrw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   0 2020-06-05 13:32 ./file1.dmp link to ./file1.dmp
hrw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   0 2020-06-05 13:32 ./file1.txt link to ./file1.txt
hrw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   0 2020-06-05 13:32 ./install.sh link to ./install.sh

I believe, this was introduces by commit
e242ff1

If I drop the -o -links 2 by adding

perl -pi -e s'/-o -links 2//;' makeself-master/makeself.sh

to above script after the extract section, the archive is fine

Target directory: sample-dir
-rw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   5 2020-06-05 13:36 ./install.sh
-rw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme   6 2020-06-05 13:36 ./file1.txt
-rw-rw-r-- itsme/itsme  78 2020-06-05 13:36 ./file1.dmp

---

My System information:

cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS"

[realtime-neil]

What is the desired behavior, that files with more than one hard link are excluded while empty directories are included?

[jjvbsag]

@realtime-neil I don't know, what the desired behavior of the commit was.

My desired behavior is, that makeself behaves similar to a normal tar archive, just adding the option to run an install script. (and some other nice things). And makeself did so before that commit.

[realtime-neil]

@jjvbsag Okay, let's get into the weeds here and consult some documentation.

• https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/hard-links.html
• https://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/tar/
• https://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/1/tar/

Can you be specific with regard to what you consider "normal" vis-a-vis the -l,--check-links option? With so many tars out there, it's non-trivial to pin down what "normal" means.

[realtime-neil]

Whoops, nevermind, I see what you mean --- that's weird.

[jjvbsag]

Ok, I tested a bit more and found, using -o -empty instead of -o -links 2 also created the desired behaviour - including empty dirs - but without the error of adding hardlinks.

The only thing, I cannot verify is, if -empty as option for find is available on all target platforms.

[megastep]

I don't see it in the list of options for the BSD version at least. It might be a GNU thing.

[realtime-neil]

This would be closed by #223