[MNG-3331] Normalize paths to sub modules

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.8
• Fix Version/s: 2.0.9, 3.0-alpha-1
• Component/s: Reactor and Workspace
• Flags: Patch
• Assignee: John Dennis Casey
• Reporter: Benjamin Bentmann
• Created: 21/Dec/07 04:04
• Updated: 05/Apr/15 14:54
• Resolved: 05/Feb/08 12:31

Description

When collecting the sub modules during a reactor build, the path to the module POMs should always be normalized. Currently, this happens only on a Windows platform via File.getCanonicalFile(). The attached patch adds normalization (but not canonicalization) for other platforms, too.

The motivation: Consider a multi module project with the following directory structure:
project/
project-parent/
project-module/
such that the parent POM in project-parent will contain
<module>../project-module</module>
to reference the sub module. Simple string/path concatenation will therefore deliver a path like

{SNIP}/project-parent/../project-module
for the sub module. Having
{SNIP}

/project-module
instead is surely better, and may it be just for nice log output.

However, certain plugins/tools try to detect symlinks by comparing the canonicalized path with the absolute path of a file. While users of DirectoryScanner are usually fine because this class always canonicalizes the base directory before the check, code that does not know about a base directory but simply gets a single file will erroneously detect a symlink because ".." gets removed during canonicalization.

This actually happens with the CpdReport of the maven-pmd-plugin. See CPD.addFile(int, File) for the cause, i.e. the code near line 97 where it prints "Skipping

{file}

since it appears to be a symlink".