[debhelper-devel] Bug#296917: dh_install could have an option to hardlink files (like cp -l)

[Niels Thykier]

Control: tags -1 wontfix

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:27:35 -0800 Daniel Burrows <dburrows at debian.org>
wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 02:57:17PM -0500, Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby at users.sourceforge.net> was heard to say:
> > You mentioned that hardlinking instead of copying files would be
> > useful in dh_install, but suggested also that there was the potential
> > for undesirable side effects; can you expand on those effects?
> 
>   Possible side effects of hardlinking, off the top of my head today:
> 
>   (1) Opening one file and writing to it will write to the other file
>       as well.  Not necessarily what you want in some circumstances.
> 
>   (2) Hardlinks can't cross file systems.  That won't be an issue in debian/,
>       but I don't know what will happen if you try to untar a package
>       containing hardlinks that accidentally cross filesystems.
> 
>   So, it seems pretty minor, but there are some semantic differences that
> could cause unpleasant surprises in unusual circumstances.  Probably as
> long as it's off by default that will be OK.
> 
>   Daniel

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion.

However, I am not entirely convinced that this is worth effort and I
have accordingly decided to mark it "wontfix".

On the other hand, I have added "--reflink=auto" to calls to cp.  For
file systems supporting it (to my knowledge, sadly only btrfs does), it
will now provide an constant-time copy'ing without the above side effects.

Thanks,
~Niels