On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 16:34, Paul Eggert wrote: > Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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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