Re: autoconf not hard-link safe

[Robert Collins]

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



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