[syslinux] [PATCH 1/1] COMBOOT API: Add get current working directory call to most

[Gene Cumm]

On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 8:20 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> Gene Cumm wrote:
>>
>> Completing the implementation within EXTLINUX will require examining
>> how to recurse up a directory tree, obtaining the name of each
>> directory and then return building the current directory string.  It
>> might have been possible to cheat and let the installer pre-populate
>> it (like the INODE number is stored) however moving the directory
>> containing extlinux.sys to become another path (ie from /boot/extlinux
>> to /extlinux) won't change the INODE number (at least the one time I
>> tested) but would invalidate the original stored path.
>>
>
> Yes, although that could be considered "out of scope".
>
> Extlinux is clearly the most challenging filesystem to deal with this
> for, but other derivatives for Unix-like filesystems are likely to have
> similar issues, and those might not even have the ".." directory entries
> that even make it possible to recurse upward.
>
> The other alternative, of course, is to not rely on a cached inode
> number but to store the initial root path by name in extlinux.sys.
>
>        -hpa

Based on this and the fact that EXTLINUX can understand . and ..,
would it be better to initialize the CurrentDirName to "./" (which
would be a correct value) until further development can be done?