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List:       python-distutils-sig
Subject:    [Distutils] Hardlinks v copying
From:       bai () kom ! auc ! dk (Bo Nygaard Bai)
Date:       2005-08-18 13:31:46
Message-ID: 43048DC2.3010302 () kom ! auc ! dk
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M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>Bo Nygaard Bai wrote:
>
>>I was trying to use the distutils sdist target on an AFS mounted
>>filesystem on Linux. It fails because it can't make hard links between
>>directories on AFS (you can inside a directory). I have not been able
>>to find any options to make it copy the files instead.
>>
>>1) Is there a way for me to force it to copy the files into the
>>   temporary directory instead of using hard links?
>>
>>2) Given that it is very hard to predict whether a particular usage of
>>   hard links is possible on any given OS/filesystem/mount combination.
>>   It seems to me that the best strategy would be to try to make the
>>   hard links, and if this fails, silently fall back to making a copy.
>
>
>How do you test whether a hard link works ? I suppose
>this would have to be made based on the path since you
>have mixed setups where some parts of the file system
>tree allow hard links where others don't.

I do not think it is possible (in the real world) to predict
when you can safely use a hard link. My suggestion was that
*if* hard links are to be used at all, the only reasonable way
to implement it would be to silently catch the exception when
creation of a link failed, and then try a copy instead.

>I don't find hard links all that useful. Disk space
>is cheap and they often cause problems (e.g. in our
>case with symlinks in the source tree).

I agree! In fact I would be quite happy with an implementation that
always did a copy, since copying is *much* more robust, and I doubt
that anybody has a python module that is big enough for the speed
difference to really matter.

> [... snip ... ]

Thanks for the plugin!

I must admit that I used the much less elegant solution of copying my
entire code base into /tmp to do the build there.

End result: Lots of copying to save a little copying ;-)

Would the maintainers consider not to use hard links?

It seems I am not the only one having problems because of them.

/Bo Bai


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