User directories integration - request for help

[Simo Sorce]

On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 10:50 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le samedi 17 mars 2007 à 10:17 +0100, Patrice Dumas a écrit :
> 
> > Still not something somebody not specifically interested in desktop
> > would like to read. 
> 
> Also it's funny the distribution that actually already tried something
> like this (mandriva) on production systems used symlinks.
> 
> They are summarily dismissed afterwards because of users mounting a CIFS
> home where "the remote host is having a broken/incomplete implementation
> of CIFS (usually a Windows system)" (SIC). Way to go, make shell users
> miserable because of this corner case (that could be handled with a
> config fallback)

CIFS never defined symlinks, and Windows never had them up to Vista, and
even in Vista they can be created only by admins, because there isn't a
single app that uses mkstemp to create temp file, as symlinks races
simply does not exist in that world. So there is no much space to say
CIFS is broken. However with the UNIX Extensions we put in it will allow
you to have everything you want and symlinks when speaking to another
CIFS server with UNIX extensions.

That said it is silly to think of people using windows shares as home
directories, I see the case insensitivity problem much more problematic
as our apps are not thought with that in mind, and besides, if an admin,
really really really want to do something stupid like that, then he will
take care of the consistencies.

> > Something I didn't exactly understood is how and when exactly those
> > directories are to be created.
> 
> Seems this part is not hammered out yet. I'd love if it was "never
> pre-create/auto-create, prompt the user to select a dir/create a new one
> whenever we can't find the dir we need"

+1 and once created other apps can see them by default

Simo.