proposed patch to mktexlsr

Hi Thomas, hi Testers,

The following patch has been applied to Debian packages of teTeX since
2.0 or so, and I don't know whether it has been discussed here yet:

--- texk/kpathsea/mktexlsr.orig.tmp	Thu Mar 25 17:48:29 2004
+++ texk/kpathsea/mktexlsr	Thu Mar 25 17:48:29 2004
@@ -80,12 +80,13 @@
   db_dir=`echo "$db_file" | sed 's%/[^/][^/]*$%%'` # can't rely on dirname
 
   test -d "$db_dir" || continue
-  test -w "$db_dir" || { echo "$progname: $db_dir: directory not writable. Skipping..." >&2; continue; }
 
   if test ! -f "$db_file"; then
+    test -w "$db_dir" || { echo "$progname: $db_dir: directory not writable. Skipping..." >&2; continue; }
     cp /dev/null "$db_file"
     # Use same permissions as parent directory, minus x,s, or t bits.
     chmod `kpsestat -xst "$db_dir"` "$db_file"
+  elif test ! -s "$db_file"; then true # it was touched, but is empty - no need to check for $ls_R_magic
   elif test "x`sed '1s/$//;1q' \"$db_file\"`" != "x$ls_R_magic" \
        && test "x`sed '1s/$//;1q' \"$db_file\"`" != "x$old_ls_R_magic"; then
     echo "$progname: $db_file lacks magic string. Skipping..." >&2

That is: 

- if we don't have write permissions to the directory, but the file
  exists yet, we don't skip this directory. Below the script checks if
  the file is writeable, anyway:

  # Skip if we cannot write the file:
  access -w "$db_file" || { echo "$progname: $db_file: no write permission. Skipping..." >&2; continue; }

- The test for the magic can be skipped if the file is empty. It seems
  this had occurred to a Debian user under some weird circumstances.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie