Re: parallel does not preserve symlinked directory structure on remote

[Benjamin Leutner]

adding the -K flag (=treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir) to the 
rsync call in rsync_transfer_cmd() would solve this issue.

some scenarios (following my initial example) for what would happen on 
the remote machine:

wd is a valid softlink:                -> no action
wd is a directory:                     -> no action
wd is a broken softlink:            -> directory wd is created
wd is missing:                          -> directory wd is created

Could you add this to parallel?
It is a slight change of behavior compared to previous versions, but I 
can't imagine a scenario where it would do harm.

cheers,
Benjamin


On 06/12/2017 08:52 PM, Benjamin Leutner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> when parallel transfers a file to a remote machine, e.g.  a basefile, 
> it creates the required directories on remote if they don't exist and 
> uses pre-existing directories otherwise.
> However if the target directory on the remote machine is a symlink to 
> another directory, it will replace it with a directory instead of 
> putting the transfered file into the linked target directory.
>
> An example:
>
> # on remote:
> mkdir remoteLinkTarget
> ln -s $HOME/remoteLinkTarget $HOME/wd
>
> # on local
> mkdir wd
> touch wd/testfile
>
> parallel --nonall --sshloginfile remoteHosts --basefile wd/testfile
>
> # wd on remote is now a directory containing the testfile and the 
> symlink is gone
> # I would have expected testfile to be placed physically under 
> $HOME/remoteLinkTarget/testfile
>
> Is it intended to behave like that?
>
> Version: GNU parallel 20170522
>
> Cheers,
> Benjamin