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runtime-linux.md: terms "source" and "destination" are very unclear for symlinks #1165
Description
I'm reading https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/blob/main/runtime-linux.md . When I first time saw this table with columns "source" and "destination", I thought that there is an error, i. e. columns are swapped. Then I understand that there is no error here. Still I think that terms "source" and "destination" are very confusing, so, please, use some alternate terms, for example "link" and "pointee", "pointer" and "pointee", "link" and "object", etc. I prefer "link" and "object"
Activity
tianon commentedon Oct 31, 2022
Maybe we should go with
targetandlinkpathso that we unambiguously match the Linuxsymlink(2)andsymlinkat(2)terms?https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/symlinkat.2.html
safinaskar commentedon Nov 2, 2022
@tianon , target and linkpath are very ambiguous
tianon commentedon Nov 2, 2022
safinaskar commentedon Nov 2, 2022
@tianon , I still think that we should just use some unambiguous clear words instead of using "official" ones and inviting a user to follow some documentation. That manual page ( https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/symlinkat.2.html ) is bad, too, and similarly should be fixed.
Also, please note that terms "target" and "linkpath" are not "official" in any way. This is just terms used by author of that manual page. My local copy of
unistd.hfile uses terms__fromand__to. Linux kernel source uses termsoldnameandnewname: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.1-rc3/source/fs/namei.c#L4449 . POSIX uses termspath1andpath2: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/symlink.html . So, there is no any "official" terms. I propose using terms, which people (hopefully) will understand: "object" and "link"