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A fun exercise in re the design quality of the Linux kernel: How many lines of code do you think was the diff to add "-o nosymfollow" (ignore symlinks) as a mount option? (git.kernel.org)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by mozz@mbin.grits.dev to c/programming@beehaw.org

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Think of a similar scope of change to a large codebase you're familiar with, for frame of reference.

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[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Little bit unfair as this was already an existing thing that got a new way to be triggered rather than a completely new feature needing code to handle not following symlinks.

To accurately guess you'd need to know that "don't follow symlinks in this particular scenario" already exists and we're just adding an OR to an if statement.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You have misunderstood. No, it wasn't an existing thing. This is the code that implements it. That's the point.

The change to fs/namei.c is the code to handle not following symlinks; the rest is some necessary code to create the option and expose it to userland.

(Edit: Rereading I do see a little better what you were saying - I actually looked it up and the code that “originally” implemented not following symlinks, that you’re saying we're now adding an or statement to activate, was 2 lines to expose the option, 2 lines of white space, and 2 lines to implement not following symlinks).