Tapio Kelloniemi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:d0n8np$4bi$1 @belgarath.linuxfromscratch.org:
> Philipp T�lke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>Tapio Kelloniemi wrote: >>> There are many package managers which use symbolic links to track >>> which files belong to which package. I have thought of a similar >>> approach but with hard links instead. >>> [...] >>> ; and what other problems might exist? >> >>There is the problem, that you can't have /usr/src on a different >>partition - which is sometimes wanted. You would have to split it into >>/src /usr/src /opt/src a.s.o, and if a package wants to put files in >>/usr _and_ /etc you can't hardlink every file... > > Symlink approach has also this problem, though it is a bit easier to > solve this in that scheme. However, using multiple package directories > for a single package will work (actually better than symlink scheme's > solutions). The problem is that this needs probably some help from user. > The issue is that hard links *cannot* cross from one filesystem into another (as hardlinks are referenced by inode, and inodes are filesystem specific - so two different files on seperate filesystems can have the same inode) Soft links (also known as symbolic links) *can* cross filesystems, as they store the path to the linked file, not it's inode. So if: / /dev/hda1 /usr /dev/hdb4 then ln -s /usr/lib/libfoo.so.x.y.z /lib will work, but ln /usr/lib/libfoo.so.x.y.z /lib will not (and can't ever under the current hardlink semantics) -- - Steve Crosby -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
