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Inconsistent path resolution with symbolic links between display editor and display runtime

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#3,873 9 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
java
Domain
desktop

Research direction

Start by reproducing the issue on Linux with the directory and symlink setup in the report. Compare how the display editor and display runtime resolve the Embedded Display's relative path. Done means the runtime finds and opens test-target.bob at the location selected in the editor when the source display is accessed through the symlink.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

My realization of the week: at least on Linux, when symbolic links are at play, a/b/../c doesn't necessarily means a/c (b can be a symbolic link, so a/b/.. means the parent of the target directory of b).

When using symbolic linked directories, it seems the display editor and the display runtime doesn't resolve relative paths the same way.

How to reproduce:

  • In a given directory, run:

    mkdir -p test/a/b
ln -sfn ./a/b test/c

  • Open Phoebus, and:

    • create a display test-target.bob in the newly created test folder,
    • create a display test-source.bob in the test/c/ folder (through the symbolic link),
    • in test-source.bob, create an Embedded Display, and using the Phoebus interface, make it point to test-target.bob,
    • run the display, and observe Phoebus saying that it can't find the file

Created structure:

.
└── test
    ├── a
    │   └── b
    │       └── test-source.bob
    ├── c -> ./a/b
    └── test-target.bob

The created Embedded Display points to ../../test-target.bob which correct: relative to the display this is test/c/../../test-target.bob which resolves to test/a/b/../../test-target.bob -> test/test-target.bob (and not test-target.bob).

For us, this happened because we develop some of our displays in different Git repositories, and have a different structure to present to the operators in production. For development, we created that structure using symbolic links so that modifying displays in that structure modifies the displays in our Git repositories:

dev-bundle
├── sources
│   └── our-internal-gitlab.example.com
│       ├── git-repo1
│       ├── git-repo2
│       └── etc.
└── views
    ├── LCS
    │   └── LLRF -> ../../sources/our-internal-gitlab.example.com/LLRF-views
    └── MCS -> ../sources/our-internal-gitlab.example.com/MCS-views
Dominant language
Java
Stars
130
Forks
132
Avg merge
2d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
23

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