Bug#296917: dh_install could have an option to hardlink files (like cp -l)

2015-04-03 Thread Niels Thykier 
Control: tags -1 wontfix

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:27:35 -0800 Daniel Burrows dburr...@debian.org
wrote:
 On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 02:57:17PM -0500, Justin Pryzby 
 justinpry...@users.sourceforge.net was heard to say:
  You mentioned that hardlinking instead of copying files would be
  useful in dh_install, but suggested also that there was the potential
  for undesirable side effects; can you expand on those effects?
 
   Possible side effects of hardlinking, off the top of my head today:
 
   (1) Opening one file and writing to it will write to the other file
   as well.  Not necessarily what you want in some circumstances.
 
   (2) Hardlinks can't cross file systems.  That won't be an issue in debian/,
   but I don't know what will happen if you try to untar a package
   containing hardlinks that accidentally cross filesystems.
 
   So, it seems pretty minor, but there are some semantic differences that
 could cause unpleasant surprises in unusual circumstances.  Probably as
 long as it's off by default that will be OK.
 
   Daniel

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion.

However, I am not entirely convinced that this is worth effort and I
have accordingly decided to mark it wontfix.

On the other hand, I have added --reflink=auto to calls to cp.  For
file systems supporting it (to my knowledge, sadly only btrfs does), it
will now provide an constant-time copy'ing without the above side effects.

Thanks,
~Niels


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Bug#296917: dh_install could have an option to hardlink files (like cp -l)

2005-02-25 Thread Daniel Burrows 
Package: debhelper
Severity: wishlist

On Friday 25 February 2005 01:14 pm, Daniel Burrows wrote:
 On Friday 25 February 2005 12:36 pm, Frank Küster wrote:
  Well, fine. But the question remains: dh_install uses cp, not mv.  What
  is the problem with using mv?  And would it be safe to use mv if I only
  move complete directories?

   I'd imagine that it doesn't use mv for the same reason install doesn't;
 ie, its purpose is to COPY files, not MOVE them.

  On reflection, this might actually be a useful feature, sort of.  In brief: 
it has been reported that dh_install can take a long time to copy files out 
of the staging directory if the files in question are large.  It occurs to me 
that an option to hardlink files for which it's appropriate (eg, with cp -l) 
would be one way of speeding things up.  Since this could have undesired side 
effects, it should probably be off by default.

  Daniel

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