diff mbox series

[wic,2/4] oe/path: don't glob-expand the destination in symlink(force=True)

Message ID 20260709205227.3470712-3-twoerner@gmail.com
State New
Headers show
Series oe/path: three fixes plus unit coverage | expand

Commit Message

Trevor Woerner July 9, 2026, 8:52 p.m. UTC
symlink(source, destination, force=True) cleared an existing
destination by calling remove(destination). remove() is a rm -rf
helper that runs its argument through glob.glob() before unlinking, so
it treats the destination as a glob pattern rather than a literal path.

For ordinary names this is merely wasteful, but a destination that
contains glob metacharacters is actively dangerous. A name with a '['
may fail to match itself and silently leave the old link in place, and
a pattern that happens to match other entries could unlink files the
caller never named. remove() even warns about exactly this in its own
docstring.

Remove the literal destination directly instead: unlink it, fall back
to shutil.rmtree() when it turns out to be a directory (EISDIR), and
treat a missing destination (ENOENT) as success. This mirrors what
remove() does per matched name, minus the glob expansion.

AI-Generated: codex/claude-opus 4.8 (xhigh)
Signed-off-by: Trevor Woerner <twoerner@gmail.com>
---
 src/wic/oe/path.py | 13 ++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/src/wic/oe/path.py b/src/wic/oe/path.py
index 862edc532ade..13c52b363694 100644
--- a/src/wic/oe/path.py
+++ b/src/wic/oe/path.py
@@ -168,7 +168,18 @@  def symlink(source, destination, force=False):
     """Create a symbolic link"""
     try:
         if force:
-            remove(destination)
+            # Remove the exact destination path. Do not route this through
+            # remove(), which treats its argument as a glob pattern: a
+            # destination containing glob metacharacters (for example a
+            # '[' in the name) could fail to match, or match and delete
+            # unrelated files.
+            try:
+                os.unlink(destination)
+            except OSError as exc:
+                if exc.errno == errno.EISDIR:
+                    shutil.rmtree(destination)
+                elif exc.errno != errno.ENOENT:
+                    raise
         os.symlink(source, destination)
     except OSError as e:
         if e.errno != errno.EEXIST or os.readlink(destination) != source: