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Re: autoconf not hard-link safe
From: |
Robert Collins |
Subject: |
Re: autoconf not hard-link safe |
Date: |
Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:20:50 +1100 |
On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 16:34, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Robert Collins <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > autoconf (more precisely autom4te AFAICT) isn't hardlink safe..
> >
> > That is, if I have a two or three source trees hardlinked together (to
> > save space) with only differing source files not linked, running
> > autoconf leaves configure (and possibly other files) still hardlinked.
>
> Can you really expect tools like Autoconf to break hard links in this
> situation?
Yes.
> Most POSIX utilities are required to leave output files
> hard-linked, so there's good precedent for Autoconf's behavior. Even
> if we altered Autoconf, that still leaves the sh, cp, etc. as tools
> that won't break the hard links.
Autoconf is designed to operate on source code - like patch is. And
patch breaks hardlinks (giving good precedence in the opposite
direction. likewise cp has '--remove-destination' to tell it to replace
hardlinks.
It needn't be the default, but it certainly should be an option, as
without it link trees are unusable with autoconf - which is a shame
given the space and time savings one achieves with link trees.
Rob
--
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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