Re: Hardlink Pitfalls (was: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels)

From: Geert Uytterhoeven
Date: Tue Jul 17 2007 - 07:43:54 EST


On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Al Boldi wrote:
> Satyam Sharma wrote:
> > Or just "cp -al" to create multiple trees at (almost) no disk cost
> > that won't interfere with each other in any way, and makes the
> > development process / generating patchsets trifle easier as well ...
>
> That would be correct if hardlinks would actually do a CoW on modify, instead
> of misleading the user into thinking he is modifying an independent file.
>
> Moral of the story: try to avoid hardlinks as much as possible!

Or use a different user account.

I used to have `all' Linux kernel source trees hardlinked where possible, as
special user `src'. So I could create a `cp -rl' copy under my own account and
get an error when trying to modify a file.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
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