Re: no-hard-link for a simple mv wrapper

[Eric L. Zolf]

Hi,

the man page is misleading: without `--no-hard-links`, rdiff-backup does 
its best to keep hard links (i.e. stores them under same inode), but 
_with_ this option, it actually treats them as two different files, and 
stores them under different inodes, actually duplicating the disk space 
required.

The "desired effect" is what you get by default from rdiff-backup, 
unless you're working under Windows.

Based on this, I've clarified the man page in 
https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup/pull/483 and realized that 
we should be able to support hard links under Windows, hence issue 
https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup/issues/484 created.

KR, Eric

On 03/11/2020 18:47, Dan Y wrote:
> I saw today the rdiff-backup command... I wanted to know:  I see in
> the man page the
> --no-hard-links option: "don't replicate hard links". Is the meaning
> that it creates hard
> links instead of to "replicate" them as separate inodes? or does it
> simply exclude
> new hard links from the mirror?
>
> The reason that I ask this - I wanted to create a simple wrapper for mv that
> would first cp -la to a new hard link instead of to create a new inode,
> then run rdiff-backup, which would register the new hard link (or not?
> that's why I ask)
> and then rm the original file...
>
> the desired effect: that rdiff-backup would register the new hard link
> in the backup
> instead of to create a new inode, then when the original
> file is deleted, rdiff-backup would then remove the original hard link
> in future backups.
>
> Thanks!
> Dan