Yo I'm trying to get the target of a symlink in po...

# kotlin-native

[Benoit Quenaudon]

Yo I'm trying to get the target of a symlink in posix.
I'm trying realpath (platform.posix.realpath) but for some reason, a private prefix is added on the resolved path. Any idea why that could be?
Code is something like that

val fullpath = realpath(path.toString(), null)
        try {
          symlinkTarget = Buffer().writeNullTerminated(fullpath).toPath()
        } finally {
          free(fullpath)
        }

And my test fails with

kotlin.AssertionError: Expected </base/symlink-target>, actual </private/base/symlink-target>.

[Benoit Quenaudon]

@jessewilson if you know

[ephemient]

what platform? if macos, lots of things (/etc /tmp /var) are actually in /private

[Benoit Quenaudon]

macos64 indeed

[Benoit Quenaudon]

The problem is though that to get the base I do getenv("TMPDIR") which points to something like /var/folders/vc/5dwj5pms6s97y5snf5t4042c0000gn/T/.
Why would realpath adds a prefix here?

[ephemient]

because the real path is really in /private

[Benoit Quenaudon]

/var/folders/vc/5dwj5pms6s97y5snf5t4042c0000gn/T/ looks like an absolute path though.
Is there a way to use realpath, or another tool to stay within the working directory?

[ephemient]

absolute path != real path

[ephemient]

if you ls -l /var you'll see /var -> /private/var

[ephemient]

what do you mean by "stay within the working directory"?

[Benoit Quenaudon]

Maybe my test should use the realpath as well.

Right now, my tests are doing something like
• create symlink /var/base/source which points to /var/base/target
• assert that the symlink target of /var/base/source is /var/base/target
but it fails because of the /private being added.

[Benoit Quenaudon]

That's funny, private has no slash in front

$ ls -ahl /var
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 11 Jan  1  2020 /var -> private/var/

[ephemient]

it amounts to the same thing

[ephemient]

I'm unclear on why you'd be testing that…

[Benoit Quenaudon]

Because we're creating a multiplatform filesystem

[uli]

so the issue is, realpath resolves all symlinks in your path. you want to just resolve the symlink that you are mentioning in the call
Maybe java.nio.file.Files.readSymbolicLink is what you want

[Benoit Quenaudon]

platform.posix.readlink did the job well for me eventually