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lndir - create a shadow directory of symbolic
links to another directory tree
lndir [ -silent ] [ -ignorelinks
] fromdir [ todir ]
The lndir program makes a shadow copy todir
of a directory tree fromdir, except that the shadow is not populated
with real files but instead with symbolic links pointing at the real files
in the fromdir directory tree. This is usually useful for maintaining
source code for different machine architectures. You create a shadow directory
containing links to the real source, which you will have usually mounted
from a remote machine. You can build in the shadow tree, and the object
files will be in the shadow directory, while the source files in the shadow
directory are just symlinks to the real files.
This scheme has the advantage
that if you update the source, you need not propagate the change to the
other architectures by hand, since all source in all shadow directories
are symlinks to the real thing: just cd to the shadow directory and recompile
away.
The todir argument is optional and defaults to the current directory.
The fromdir argument may be relative (e.g., ../src) and is relative to todir
(not the current directory).
Note that RCS, SCCS, CVS and CVS.adm directories
are not shadowed.
If you add files, simply run lndir again. New files will
be silently added. Old files will be checked that they have the correct
link.
Deleting files is a more painful problem; the symlinks will just point
into never never land.
If a file in fromdir is a symbolic link, lndir will
make the same link in todir rather than making a link back to the (symbolic
link) entry in fromdir. The -ignorelinks flag changes this behavior.
- -silent
- Normally
lndir outputs the name of each subdirectory as it descends into it. The
-silent option suppresses these status messages.
- -ignorelinks
- Causes the program
to not treat symbolic links in fromdir specially. The link created in todir
will point back to the corresponding (symbolic link) file in fromdir. If
the link is to a directory, this is almost certainly the wrong thing.
- This
option exists mostly to emulate the behavior the C version of
- lndir had
in X11R6. Its use is not recommended.
The program displays the
name of each subdirectory it enters, followed by a colon. The -silent option
suppresses these messages.
A warning message is displayed if the symbolic
link cannot be created. The usual problem is that a regular file of the
same name already exists.
If the link already exists but doesn't point to
the correct file, the program prints the link name and the location where
it does point.
The patch program gets upset if it cannot change the
files. You should never run patch from a shadow directory anyway.
You need
to use something like
find todir -type l -print | xargs rm
to clear out all files before you can relink (if fromdir moved, for instance).
Something like
find . \! -type d -print
will find all files that are not directories.
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