Re: how to use not "also" symbolic link time, but "only"

[Bryan Ischo]

On 04/13/12 09:47, Mark Galeck (CW) wrote:
> It seems to me this is a natural thing to do, and it seems to me there 
> is no way to do it?

I think many people, myself included, avoid using symlinks for reasons 
like this.  As unusual file system constructs with unusual usage 
semantics, they tend to cause problems when they are used in any but the 
most simple ways.  Not only that, they're highly non-portable.

I realize that doesn't help you if you absolutely need to create 
symlinks using make for some reason, but I hope you might at least 
consider whether or not managing symlinks is really a job you want to 
leave to make, or even be doing at all as part of your build process.

I personally use commands like this sometimes:

from: $(MAKEFILE)
          ln -sf to $@ >/dev/null 2>&1

All this does is prevent me from seeing the unnecessary 'ln' command 
executions, which has the disadvantage of hiding errors that could 
legitimately occur, but at least I can forget about this little wart 
rule and never be bothered by it again.

In my particular case, I have rules for creating directories on-demand, 
and those rules were difficult to work in a way that didn't sometimes 
'mkdir' a directory that already existed.  It was easier to just send 
the mkdir output to null and never worry about it.  I am sure that 
occasionally I am wasting some CPU by running a mkdir command, but it 
would be impossible for me to perceive it since these commands run so fast.

Bryan