X-Recipient:	archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com
DKIM-Filter:	OpenDKIM Filter v2.11.0 sourceware.org 45ABD3857B8E
DKIM-Signature:	v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=cygwin.com;
	s=default; t=1690047369;
	bh=0gw6E45j/PrgPCPPlxngyRKIvb1C9M6Wvdx2U/BvSTg=;
	h=Date:Subject:To:References:In-Reply-To:List-Id:List-Unsubscribe:
	List-Archive:List-Post:List-Help:List-Subscribe:From:Reply-To:Cc:
	From;
	b=s2Gl9PLuhvQH0hoE7CRjU5GXW/p+rA1J8Z+m3vMlpQOaZsj5gVWCvQLUpDsoGXaVq
	qAOP5pGOyK0WWjTxOg7UFC7Jcn+qyduDWZfqVoniQp9dCoXysIZB0ZT31L1dD/brSO
	43s2Kr8U1VkG8vpQwSkIFyjXGAruIAsEO9BEHhfk=
X-Original-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
DMARC-Filter:	OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 sourceware.org 1414C3858D1E
Message-ID:	<b917ab75-94d4-fae2-0a50-65b2ca3c82bf@jhmg.net>
Date:	Sat, 22 Jul 2023 10:35:53 -0700
MIME-Version:	1.0
User-Agent:	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101
	Firefox/102.0 Thunderbird/102.13.0
Subject:	Re: Most git executables are hard links to git.exe?
To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References:	<a243a980-66ba-e01e-298a-60a221efd7b4 AT jhmg DOT net>
	<ba2c0efe-7892-6eb3-9828-ca8d83643939 AT Shaw DOT ca>
	<a5e19263-d820-7737-16eb-16e6429dd586 AT jhmg DOT net>
	<CA+kUOa=PaUHpv6cyJnwab_cRxZz9+b+=P-vkzUtnk7SSvXce2g AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>
In-Reply-To:	<CA+kUOa=PaUHpv6cyJnwab_cRxZz9+b+=P-vkzUtnk7SSvXce2g@mail.gmail.com>
X-Spam-Status:	No, score=-2.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, DKIM_SIGNED,
	DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU, DKIM_VALID_EF, NICE_REPLY_A, SPF_HELO_PASS,
	SPF_PASS, TXREP,
	T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6
X-Spam-Checker-Version:	SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on
	server2.sourceware.org
X-BeenThere:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
X-Mailman-Version:	2.1.29
List-Id:	General Cygwin discussions and problem reports <cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Archive:	<https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/>
List-Post:	<mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help:	<mailto:cygwin-request AT cygwin DOT com?subject=help>
List-Subscribe:	<https://cygwin.com/mailman/listinfo/cygwin>,
	<mailto:cygwin-request AT cygwin DOT com?subject=subscribe>
From:	Jim Garrison via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Reply-To:	jhg AT acm DOT org
Cc:	Jim Garrison <jhg AT jhmg DOT net>
Sender:	"Cygwin" <cygwin-bounces+archive-cygwin=delorie DOT com AT cygwin DOT com>

On 07/22/23 10:33, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 at 22:54, Jim Garrison via Cygwin wrote:
>>
>> On 07/21/23 14:52, Brian Inglis wrote:
>>> On 2023-07-21 14:59, Jim Garrison via Cygwin wrote:
>>>> Git comes with over 100 executables, mostly in /usr/libexec/git-core,
>>>> that all appear to be *hard* links to /bin/git, in both Cygwin and
>>>> Windows. The Windows fsutil command shows they're all hard linked:
>> [snip]
>>>> I'm curious to know if there's a specific reason for this implementation
>>>> that would make it the choice over symbolic links.
>>>
>>> For the same reason you are complaining about backups not taking
>>> hardlinks into account: to avoid distributing 400MB instead of 3MB.
>>>
>>> Cygwin backup utilities should be able to deal with these e.g. rsync -H,
>>> --hard-links, although it appears xcopy and robocopy may not under
>>> Windows 10; don't know about other utilities or Windows 11.
>>
>> But why not use symbolic links to accomplish the same thing?
> 
> A few reasons off the top of my head:
> 
> - This is what the Git build tooling does out of the box. Minimising
> the number of changes we're making as a downstream packager makes my
> life easier as package maintainer.
> 
[snip]
> Hopefully that's all useful and/or interesting, even if it's not the
> answer you were hoping for!

Yes, that's very useful and now I understand and appreciate all the
good reasons for hard links.  Thanks!

-- 
Jim Garrison
jhg AT acm DOT org


-- 
Problem reports:      https://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                  https://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:        https://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:     https://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

- Raw text -