On 9/4/07, aaa aaa aaa aaa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I keep local mirrors of slackware-current and slackware-12.0 for personal > use (Slackware Linux is one of the oldest Linux distributions). My big issue > is the lack of hdd free space. At the moment of the release the directory > trees are identical. Then differences begin to appear (mostly bugfix package > releases in the stable version and new packages in -current). I'm thinking > to replace all identical files (only files, not directories) in -current > with symlinks to files from 12.0.
Use hard links instead! They are generally better for saving space on identical files without confusing tools that manipulate the files. Rsync will leave a destination file identical to the source file alone regardless of whether the destination file is hard-linked but will break the hard link when the source file changes since rsync updates a destination file by writing a temporary file with the new data and then moving it into place. This is exactly what you want, with one exception: if a source file changes attributes but not data, rsync will tweak the hard-linked destination file, writing through to the slackware-12.0 . If this is unacceptable to you, there are two ways to avoid it: (1) receive into a new destination on each run and use --link-dest to the slackware-12.0 and the old destination, or (2) encourage us to implement the --no-tweak-hlinked option I proposed and then pass that option. Matt -- To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
