variant symlinks (was Re: Anybody working on removing sendmail from base?)

[Matthew Dillon]

:I've had variant (magic) symlinks working under 4-stable for awhile
:now. You can do some really neat stuff with them.
:
:An old message concerning them can be found on the -stable
:list, msgid <20030810040807.GA26220 at xxxxxxxxxxx>.
:
:An older set of patches can be seen here:
:
:http://people.freebsd.org/~jwd/mlinks/freebsd-magic-patches
:http://people.freebsd.org/~jwd/mlinks/env-magic-patches
:
:What you want requires both sets. It also requires some
:patches to the shells to make sure the environment variables
:are all handled in a known fashion.
:
:I have some newer patch sets I need to upload.
:
:The origin of the patchset comes from an old netbsd pr.
:
:-John
:..

    Interesting, these patches make for good reference material but I
    don't think we can use them straight.  I really think we need a
    separate namespace rather then access the process environment, and I don't
    think we need to hardwire particular names to the system environment.
    Plus there are security considerations... we need these to be useable
    on the system's primary mounts.

						-Matt