Bug#509685: ITP: hardlink -- Hardlink multiple copies of the same file

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 12:04:43PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
>> Julian Andres Klode wrote:
>>>  Hardlink is a tool which detects multiple copies of the same file and replaces
>>>  them with hardlinks.
>>>  .
>>>  The idea has been taken from http://code.google.com/p/hardlinkpy/, but the
>>>  code has been written from scratch and licensed under the MIT license.
>> Do we really need another tool like this?
>>
>> We already have these packages:
>>
>>   fdupes
>>   perforate
> AFAIK, they do not replace files, they just find them.

That's not correct.  From the manpage of finddup, part of perforate:

       -l, --link
              link the identical files together

>> Plus a host of tools that do backups, datapacker that packs things onto
>> DVDs, and the like, using hard links.
> hardlink can be used to link files in multiple backup trees,
> and also features options to maximize/minimize the link count,
> and much more.
> 
> Imagine you have two backups, each on a different filesystem. Now you
> want to have them both on one filesystem. In this situation, you can use
> hardlink to link all common files in the backups together.
>