From: jlnance@unity.ncsu.edu
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 14:50:33 -0400
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: FS: hardlinks on directories
Message-ID: <20030804185033.GA19998@ncsu.edu>
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On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 05:05:06PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:

> tar --dereference loops on symlinks _today_, to name an example.
> All you have to do is to provide a way to find out if a directory is a
> hardlink, nothing more. And that should be easy.

Actually I think that is the crux of the problem.  If I do:

    touch a
    ln a b

then a and b are both links to the same file.  It is not like a is the
real file and b is a link to it.  The situation is indistinguishable
from:

    touch b
    ln b a

When you say that you want hardlinks to work on directories I believe
people are making the assumption that you want this to hold true for
directories as well.  The difference between hardlinking directories
and using symlinks or mount --bind is that there IS a difference between
a directory and a link to the directory.

Thanks,

Jim
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