[abendrothj]

Based on #15126; only the last commit is new here.

With -h, -H and -L were also used to decide whether to change links, so -RHh/-RLh didn't descend through the operand link, and -RLh changed link targets instead of the links.

Traversal now follows -H/-L, and whether a link or its target is changed follows -h. When a link is changed, an owner or group that wasn't given stays unchanged instead of being copied from the target. A symlink operand is now judged for --from and reported by -v by its target, and so is one met in the tree under -L. As with GNU 9.12, a link that can't be followed fails with "cannot access", a link to a directory that can't be read is left alone, and a dangling link is judged and changed as itself. The -v text still differs from GNU as on main (unrequested IDs printed, operand before descendants).

Tests: test_chown_h_judges_symlink_operand_on_its_target, test_chown_big_l_with_h_judges_from_on_link_target, test_chown_h_changes_symlink_operand_itself, test_chown_h_keeps_unchanged_group_of_symlink_operand, test_chown_h_changes_dangling_symlink_operand, test_chown_h_fails_on_symlink_loop_operand, test_chown_h_leaves_link_to_unreadable_dir, test_chown_big_l_with_h_changes_symlinks_in_tree.

Closes #15116

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[codspeed]

Merging this PR will not alter performance

1 warning

⚠️ 67 benchmarks are dominated by system calls

System calls cannot be simulated consistently and are left out of the measure. The reported value understates the real cost. Switch to the Walltime instrument to measure them.

Learn more about system calls

See affected benchmarks

✅ 115 untouched benchmarks
⏩ 360 skipped benchmarks¹

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_{Comparing abendrothj:chown-h-with-dereference (9944c37) with main (bbef561)}

Footnotes

1. 360 benchmarks were skipped, so the baseline results were used instead. If they were deleted from the codebase, click here and archive them to remove them from the performance reports. ↩