Spicy-plugin creates dangling links (assuming binary installation)

[0xxon]

An installation of spicy-plugin will leave the following dangling link in include/zeek/builtin-plugins/spicy-plugin/lib64:

[johanna@johanna-zeek-compile lib64]$ ls -lh
total 1.0K
lrwxrwxrwx 1 johanna johanna 57 Jun 15 09:57 zeek-spicy -> /home/johanna/zeek/build/src/builtin-plugins/spicy-plugin

Assuming a binary installation, this link will point into nothingness; having links to outside of the distribution directory also violates packaging guidelines on just about any system, and generally seems like a bad idea.

@bbannier pointed me to this as the cause

spicy-plugin/CMakeLists.txt

Lines 211 to 216 in 8cd9a0b

	if (ZEEK_SPICY_PLUGIN_INTERNAL_BUILD)
	# The static build doesn't put the aux files into the build directory
	# We create links to get the same effect.
	file(MAKE_DIRECTORY "${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}")
	file(CREATE_LINK "${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}"
	"${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}/zeek-spicy" SYMBOLIC)

and mentioned that there might have been a discussion between @sethhall and @rsmmr about this.

I am not sure what the reason for this is - but in my opinion we should not have links back into the source folder in a finished installation.

Optimally this should be removed for the 5.0 release.

[rsmmr]

I don't quite recall the context here, but I'll take a look.

[rsmmr]

Does "an installation of spicy-plugin" refer to a doing Zeek installation with Spicy being built-in? I assume so because that CMake code addresses that case (ZEEK_SPICY_PLUGIN_INTERNAL_BUILD). However, I don't think that CREATE_LINK should be affecting anything at install time. And I don't see any dangling link after make install with current Zeek master.

Asked differently: how to reproduce this? how are you building/installing things?

[rsmmr]

@0xxon ☝️

[0xxon]

Sorry for the delay. Steps to reproduce with current master on Fedora 36:

./configure --binary-package --enable-static-broker --enable-static-binpac --disable-broker-tests --build-type=Release --prefix=$HOME/install --generator=Ninja
cd build
ninja install

ls -lh $HOME/install/include/zeek/builtin-plugins/spicy-plugin/lib64
total 1.0K
lrwxrwxrwx 1 johanna johanna 57 Jun 22 15:00 zeek-spicy -> /home/johanna/zeek/build/src/builtin-plugins/spicy-plugin

[rsmmr]

I still don't see a lib64 link at all, tried it on Ubuntu. I'll try F36 next.

# ./configure --binary-package --enable-static-broker --enable-static-binpac --disable-broker-tests --build-type=Release --prefix=/home/robin/tmp/install --generator=Ninja --build-dir=build-ubuntu
# cd build-ubuntu
# ninja install
# ls -al $HOME/tmp/install/include/zeek/builtin-plugins/spicy-plugin
total 48
drwxr-xr-x 9 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 cmake
-rw-r--r-- 1 robin robin 1579 Jun 23 13:32 consts.bif.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 robin robin  820 Jun 23 13:32 events.bif.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 robin robin  696 Jun 23 13:32 functions.bif.h
drwxr-xr-x 3 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 include
drwxr-xr-x 2 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 spicy
drwxr-xr-x 3 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 src
drwxr-xr-x 3 robin robin 4096 Jun 24 09:50 tests

[0xxon]

Well, on ubuntu the same broken link is in the lib subdirectory, instead of lib64 :)

(at least for me with those options on Ubuntu 22.04)

[rsmmr]

Well, on ubuntu the same broken link is in the lib subdirectory, instead of lib64 :)

I actually didn't see any link even with that configure, not sure why. Either way, looks like Benjamin found a solution.

[0xxon]

Great, thank you.
Out of curiosity - this only removes the symlinks in binary packaging mode. Which means that for most people that do source installations, they will still be present - even if the source-tree is removed later. Why are the links needed at all?