Ashwin Agrawal <aagrawal@pivotal.io> writes: > In general, the variable LN_S is 'ln -s', however, LN_S changes to 'cp > -pR' if configure finds the file system does not support symbolic > links. > I was playing with 'ln' for some other reason where I symbolic linked > it to '/bin/false'. That revealed the failure for > src/backend/Makefile. Greping for 'ln -s' revealed three places it's > used. Attaching the patch to fix the same.
Hm. So, these oversights are certainly bugs in narrow terms. However, they've all been like that for a *long* time --- the three instances you found date to 2005, 2006, and 2008 according to "git blame". The complete lack of complaints shows that nobody cares. So I think a fairly strong case could be made for going the other way, ie s/$(LN_S)/ln -s/g and get rid of the configure-time cycles wasted in setting up that variable.