[Python-Dev] Ext4 data loss

[Neil Hodgson]

   The technique advocated by Theodore Ts'o (save to temporary then
rename) discards metadata. What would be useful is a simple, generic
way in Python to copy all the appropriate metadata (ownership, ACLs,
...) to another file so the temporary-and-rename technique could be
used.

   On Windows, there is a hack in the file system that tries to track
the use of temporary-and-rename and reapply ACLs and on OS X there is
a function FSPathReplaceObject but I don't know how to do this
correctly on Linux.

   Neil