[syslog-ng] [patch] new feature for file destination: persistent symlinks

[a.biardi at tiscali.it]

Hi all,

I'm new here. I love syslog-ng: it's well written and documented and
each time I need some new feature, I dig up the documentation and I
find it's already implemented!

Like many others, I use macros in file destinations (say,
"/var/log/cron.${YEAR}${MONTH}"), but I also want to maintain a
persistent symlink to the current logfile (that would be
something like "/var/log/cron") in order to have "easier" access if I'm
grepping for something manually.

I couldn't find this feature in syslog-ng, so I wrote the code myself;
in the configuration file, it looks like this:

destination d_file_cron {
  file("/var/log/cron.${YEAR}${MONTH}" symlink_as("/var/log/cron"));
};

It works for me on my Slackware boxes. I'm sharing the patch I put
together, hoping that it may be useful to others and perhaps even
considered for inclusion in mainstream.

From a functional perspective, the "symlink_as" file inherits both
"create-dirs" and file ownership from its file destination (permissions
are not applicable to symlinks, at least on linux).

Patch applies cleanly to latest production release (3.33). I tried to
keep the original coding style for easier review (admittedly, the code
could have gone into the function that opens the file destination, but
I didn't want to change too much).

Thanks for the good work and happy logging!

Andrea.
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