severity 6138 wishlist thanks Peng Yu wrote: > I'm wondering if there is any tool that can do almost exact the same > thing as mv, but it can maintain symbolic links. > > mv doens't maintain relative symbolic links. For example, I have file > /tmp/A/file1.txt and a symbolic link /tmp/file1.txt that point to > A/file.txt (by the relative path). If I mv /tmp/A to /tmp/B, the link > /tmp/file1.txt will be broken.
For clarification you said: file /tmp/A/file1.txt symlink /tmp/file1.txt -> A/file.txt But I think you meant to say: file /tmp/A/file1.txt symlink /tmp/file1.txt -> A/file1.txt After moving /tmp/A to /tmp/B file /tmp/B/file1.txt symlink /tmp/file1.txt -> B/file1.txt (proposed) This is not possible. Symbolic links are simply files in the filesystem. Special files, of course, but otherwise just files. The two files /tmp/file1.txt and /tmp/A/file1.txt are unrelated to each other in any way other than by content of /tmp/file1.txt. To do what you are asking would require that every move operation consult the contents of every symlink on the filesystem and adjust those other symlinks. Worse this is not only on the current filesystem but also on other filesystems. Because symlinks are not real file links but simply a run time name conversion a symlink may exist on other filesystems. Those other filesystems may be over NFS or other network filesystem. Other filesystems may not even be powered up and online at the time! Also other symlinks may point to this file but only incidentally, in which case they would get changed even though they are unrelated. > Another example: I have file /tmp/file1.txt and symbolic link > /tmp/A/file1.txt that points to ../file1.txt (by relative path). If I > move /tmp/A to /tmp/B/A, the symbolic /tmp/A/file1.txt will be broken. file /tmp/file1.txt symlink /tmp/A/file1.txt -> ../file1.txt After moving to a different level of hiearchy: file /tmp/file1.txt symlink /tmp/A/B/file1.txt -> ../file1.txt A tool is possible that reads the value of the link (readlink) and then removes the old symlink and creates a new (unrelated) symlink in the target location but with a new path calculated to the old location. That would not be a move operation. That would be something different that removed the old and created a new. But if that is what you wanted then you probably wanted to convert the symlink to an absolute path first and then you could move it. Off the top of my head here is a simple script that I haven't tested and may or may not behave reasonably. In particular error handling is poor. #!/bin/sh -e src=$1 dst=$2 path=$(readlink -f "$src") rm -f "$src" ln -s "$path" "$src" mv "$src" "$dst" I am sure that there are related tools here but nothing immediately comes to my mind. I have always simply scripted the operation that I required at the moment. Bob
