[Haskell-cafe] dot-ghci files

[Ketil Malde]

Tony Morris <tonymorris at gmail.com> writes:

> I teach haskell quite a lot. I recommend using .ghci files in projects.
> Today I received complaints about the fact that ghci will reject .ghci
> if it is group-writeable. 

Huh? That's pretty weird.

> I am wondering if these complaints have legitimate grounds i.e. maybe
> you want to have group write on that file for some reason.

Well - one common setup is to create users along with their own group,
and optional membership in other groups, combined with an umask of 002
(i.e., files are created group-writeable) or perhaps 027
(group-readable, but not accessible at all to others).

This way, a group-shared directory can have the setgid bit set, and when
a user writes a file in this directory, the file will inherit the group
from the directory, and be writeable by other people of the group.
Unless it also has the sticky bit set.

(Hmm, aren't Unix permissions supposed to be the *simple* solution? It's
been a while since I looked at this, so please correct if I got the
details wrong. :-)

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants