NAME¶
lndir - create a shadow directory of symbolic links to another directory tree
SYNOPSIS¶
lndir [
-silent ] [
-ignorelinks ] [
-withrevinfo ]
fromdir [
todir ]
DESCRIPTION¶
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 BitKeeper, CVS, CVS.adm, .git, .hg, RCS, SCCS, and .svn directories
are shadowed only if the
-withrevinfo flag is specified. Files with
names ending in
~ are never 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.
OPTIONS¶
- -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 source control manager subdirectories (those
named BitKeeper, CVS, CVS.adm, .git, .hg, RCS, SCCS, or .svn) to be
treated as any other directory, rather than ignored.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
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.
SEE ALSO¶
ln(1).