On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Jim Nelson <[email protected]> wrote:

> What I should've asked before was, why can't you simply create a symlink
> from your Pictures directory to the git annex directory?  That would solve
> this problem right away, I think.  Library monitoring should work as well.
>

That's a good idea but the filenames would be long and ugly instead of the
symlink filenames :)  Also I'm thinking in terms of XMP sidecars.  I'd want
the sidecars next to the symlinks to be used, and don't want sidecars next
to the symlink targets to be used.  But I'll accept that this might be
idiosyncratic to my use case.

I see two or three decisions to be made in regards to symlinked-file
support:

- Should a broken symlink count as missing files?  I propose that whatever
you do for symlinked directories, symlinked files should behave the same
way.  (The patch I sent you will mark broken symlinks as missing but only on
startup.)

- Should monitors be installed on symlink targets?  I think it would be best
if we could but you mentioned a system limit on the number of monitors.  I
did a test on my system (Ubuntu natty+oneiric, Linux kernel 3.0.0.9) and
wrote a program that opens monitors on every directory in a directory tree.
I ran it on my home directory and it stopped at 31728 -- this is also the
number of directories found by find -type "d".  How do you feel about a
patch to unconditionally install monitors on symlinked files' directories?
If that turns out to cause problems, we can keep those monitors separate and
monitor them only as resources allow.

These are the only perils and pitfalls I can think of.  Do you see any I
missed?  I think with these changes (and I'll hack them up if you like),
symlinks can be as robust as they can be.

Ethan
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