Library delegation - should the path to parent library be the canonical path?

[Mark Reinhold]

> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:26:49 +0100
> From: alan.bateman at oracle.com

> I've been playing with the module library delegation and it looks to me that
> the path to the parent library is stored as the canonical path at the time that
> the library is created. I wonder if this will be a problem. Say in a cluster
> where the canonical path might differ depending on which node that has mounted
> the file system.

Canonical paths aren't node-dependent in NFS clusters.  Are they that way
in any other distributed filesystem?

These paths don't absolutely have to be canonical, I think, but whether
canonical, absolute, or possibly relative it will always be the case that
moving non-leaf libraries around will be problematic.

>                  Also, I assume it means that a library cannot be moved to a
> different location.

Leaf libraries can be moved trivially.  My expectation is that nearly all
non-leaf libraries will be system-defined, or at the very least always
placed in well-known locations.  So I don't expect this to be a huge
problem in practice.

>                     On that, does jmod need a "reparent" command to aid fix up
> in the event that a library is moved?

Yes, that's a good idea.

- Mark