g_get_home_dir(): honour $HOME

If the $HOME environment variable is set, prefer that to the entry in
/etc/passwd.

This brings us in line with almost every other utility and library on
UNIX-like systems while avoiding some of the more complicated
possibilities that have been suggested.

This incompatible change has been petitioned for quite some time by
many, and in particular from the Debian world, which carries a patch
that adds a new G_HOME environment variable with the same meaning as
this patch now assigns to HOME.

The primary motivation for the change was to increase the testability of
GLib-based programs from 'make check' types of frameworks: it is now
possible to set HOME to a temp directory to avoid the testsuite
modifying the user's real home directory.

The change also brings us increased compliance with the XDG Base
Directory Specification.  The specification specifically states that the
default values should be computed based on the HOME environment
variable, whereas we were basing them on the value from /etc/passwd.

The change was agreed to by all in attendence at the November 29 Gtk+
developer meeting.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142568

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 80b5640..20bc193 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,12 @@
+Overview of changes from GLib 2.35.2 to 2.35.3
+==============================================
+
+This release contains an incompatible change to the g_get_home_dir()
+function.  Previously, this function would effectively ignore the HOME
+environment variable and always return the value from /etc/password.  As
+of this version, the HOME variable is used if it is set and the value
+from /etc/passwd is only used as a fallback.
+
 Overview of changes from GLib 2.35.1 to 2.35.2
 ==============================================
 

diff --git a/glib/gutils.c b/glib/gutils.c
index 8997329..de7c3f8 100644 (file)
--- a/glib/gutils.c
+++ b/glib/gutils.c
@@ -700,14 +700,19 @@ g_get_any_init_do (void)
       g_tmp_dir = g_strdup ("/tmp");
     }
 #endif /* !G_OS_WIN32 */
-  
-#ifdef G_OS_WIN32
-  /* We check $HOME first for Win32, though it is a last resort for Unix
-   * where we prefer the results of getpwuid().
-   */
+
+  /* We first check HOME and use it if it is set */
   g_home_dir = g_strdup (g_getenv ("HOME"));
 
-  /* Only believe HOME if it is an absolute path and exists */
+#ifdef G_OS_WIN32
+  /* Only believe HOME if it is an absolute path and exists.
+   *
+   * We only do this check on Windows for a couple of reasons.
+   * Historically, we only did it there because we used to ignore $HOME
+   * on UNIX.  There are concerns about enabling it now on UNIX because
+   * of things like autofs.  In short, if the user has a bogus value in
+   * $HOME then they get what they pay for...
+   */
   if (g_home_dir)
     {
       if (!(g_path_is_absolute (g_home_dir) &&
@@ -717,7 +722,7 @@ g_get_any_init_do (void)
          g_home_dir = NULL;
        }
     }
-  
+
   /* In case HOME is Unix-style (it happens), convert it to
    * Windows style.
    */
@@ -875,11 +880,6 @@ g_get_any_init_do (void)
 
 #endif /* !HAVE_PWD_H */
 
-#ifndef G_OS_WIN32
-  if (!g_home_dir)
-    g_home_dir = g_strdup (g_getenv ("HOME"));
-#endif
-
 #ifdef __EMX__
   /* change '\\' in %HOME% to '/' */
   g_strdelimit (g_home_dir, "\\",'/');
@@ -975,31 +975,31 @@ g_get_real_name (void)
 /**
  * g_get_home_dir:
  *
- * Gets the current user's home directory as defined in the 
- * password database.
- *
- * Note that in contrast to traditional UNIX tools, this function 
- * prefers <filename>passwd</filename> entries over the <envar>HOME</envar> 
- * environment variable. 
- *
- * One of the reasons for this decision is that applications in many 
- * cases need special handling to deal with the case where 
- * <envar>HOME</envar> is
- * <simplelist>
- *   <member>Not owned by the user</member>
- *   <member>Not writeable</member>
- *   <member>Not even readable</member>
- * </simplelist>
- * Since applications are in general <emphasis>not</emphasis> written 
- * to deal with these situations it was considered better to make 
- * g_get_home_dir() not pay attention to <envar>HOME</envar> and to 
- * return the real home directory for the user. If applications
- * want to pay attention to <envar>HOME</envar>, they can do:
- * |[
- *  const char *homedir = g_getenv ("HOME");
- *   if (!homedir)
- *      homedir = g_get_home_dir (<!-- -->);
- * ]|
+ * Gets the current user's home directory.
+ *
+ * As with most UNIX tools, this function will return the value of the
+ * <envar>HOME</envar> environment variable if it is set to an existing
+ * absolute path name, falling back to the <filename>passwd</filename>
+ * file in the case that it is unset.
+ *
+ * If the path given in <envar>HOME</envar> is non-absolute, does not
+ * exist, or is not a directory, the result is undefined.
+ *
+ * <note><para>
+ *   Before version 2.36 this function would ignore the
+ *   <envar>HOME</envar> environment variable, taking the value from the
+ *   <filename>passwd</filename> database instead.  This was changed to
+ *   increase the compatibility of GLib with other programs (and the XDG
+ *   basedir specification) and to increase testability of programs
+ *   based on GLib (by making it easier to run them from test
+ *   frameworks).
+ * </para><para>
+ *   If your program has a strong requirement for either the new or the
+ *   old behaviour (and if you don't wish to increase your GLib
+ *   dependency to ensure that the new behaviour is in effect) then you
+ *   should either directly check the <envar>HOME</envar> environment
+ *   variable yourself or unset it before calling any functions in GLib.
+ * </para></note>
  *
  * Returns: the current user's home directory
  */