I'd say: Change the name (and update the Implementation section) and allow any of sticky and/or set?id bits to be set or cleared.  Most setuid programs nowadays are setuid-root, but there is nothing *wrong* with making a program that people can run with your permissions, it's just not very common.  All these bits, like the permissions bits, date back to the Sixth Edition and are the same in all Posix systems, despite their theoretical non-portability.


On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 1:26 PM <xxxxxx@ancell-ent.com> wrote:
As a matter of policy, and a simple interface, should we allow set-file-mode to set anything other than the permission bits?  If not, should we rename it to set-file-permission-bits and apply a mask to the input, or signal an error if anything beyond the permission bits is supplied?  Does it make any sense to allow setting additional but not set-uid or set-gid bits here?  I personally have never manually set the sticky bit on a directory....

- Harold