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lndir - create a shadow directory of symbolic
links to another directory tree
lndir [ -silent ] [ -ignorelinks
] [ -withrevinfo ] 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).
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.
- -withrevinfo
- Causes any RCS, SCCS, CVS
and CVS.adm subdirectories to be treated as any other directory, rather
than ignored.
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.
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