Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263617AbUCYUjI (ORCPT ); Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:39:08 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263618AbUCYUjH (ORCPT ); Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:39:07 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:40623 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263617AbUCYUjE (ORCPT ); Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:39:04 -0500 Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:38:50 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Jamie Lokier cc: "Eric W. Biederman" , =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rn?= Engel , Davide Libenzi , "Patrick J. LoPresti" , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: [PATCH] cowlinks v2 In-Reply-To: <20040325194303.GE11236@mail.shareable.org> Message-ID: References: <20040321125730.GB21844@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de> <20040321181430.GB29440@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de> <20040325174942.GC11236@mail.shareable.org> <20040325194303.GE11236@mail.shareable.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1105 Lines: 27 On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Jamie Lokier wrote: > > That is not useful for me or the other people who want to use this to > duplicate large source trees and run "diff" between trees. > > "diff" depends on being able to check if files in the two trees are > identical -- by checking whether the inode number and device (and > maybe other stat data) are identical. This allows "diff -ur" between > two cloned trees the size of linux to be quite fast. Without that > optimisation, it's very slow indeed. I think the correct thing to do is to just admit that cowlinks aren't POSIX, and instead see the inode number as a way to see whether the link has been broken or not. Ie just accept the inode number potentially changing. That would make "diff" (adn most other uses) ok with this, and anythign that isn't, just couldn't be used with cowlinked files. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/