Re: Hard links

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Topi Miettinen wrote:
> Some packages use hard links to provide different names for single
> executable. I think this practice is at least questionable:
> 
> - It's hard to notice hard links, they look exactly like normal files
> (AFAIK, there are no tools exept ls -li and find -inum). Many programs
> support symbolic links, including web/ftp servers.

Web servers are rarely used to browse /usr/bin.

Ftp servers support ls -li.
 
> - It's easy to make mistakes when copying (for example, over NFS/SMB).
> Suddenly you have less disk space than before and no clue what happened.
> While this can happen with symlinks, it's probably less likely.

It's easy to mess up symlinks. If you delete the actual file, without
noticing there are symlinks to it, you end up with broken symlinks. With 
hard links, this is not an issue. This makes hard links more robust and a
better choice for certian situations. This is why they continue to exist,
and have not been replaced entirely by symlinks allready.

> Should some text be appended to Policy, discouraging (or even forbidding?)
> hard link use?

No, both types of links have thier uses.

-- 
see shy jo


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