Homebrew

[Daniel J. Luke]

On May 18, 2010, at 8:48 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> On May 18, 2010, at 07:45, Daniel J. Luke wrote:
>>> Where do symlinks shine when compared to hardlinks?
>> 
>> They don't.
> 
> Well, symlinks would fix the Time Machine issue, wouldn't they? Hardlinks are indistinguishable (to Time Machine, anyway) from real second copies of files, so Time Machine backs up twice, doesn't it?

I don't know, there's no reason why Time Machine can't be hard-link smart, though. If you've noticed bad behavior, you should probably make sure you file a bug report with Apple (so it has a chance of getting fixed).

> With symlinks it wouldn't. Not saying we should switch back to symlinks, and I know we have a branch in progress that already fixes this a different way (right?) just pointing out a case where symlinks have an advantage over hardlinks.

The advantage being that a TM backup will take up a little less space (and be a little less broken when restored). The disadvantage being that it will re-expose all of the old bugs we saw in individual ports when we used symlinks.

> Personally, I've never made a hardlink, but I've made tons of symlinks. A standard OS distribution is also filled with symlinks. They can't be so bad.

IIRC if you have your ${prefix}var/macports/software on a different volume than ${prefix} you'll get symlinks (since you can't hardlink across filesystems). There used to be a macports.conf switch to force symlinks too (if it's still there it would be pretty easy for you to switch over to them and see how things work for the ports you have installed).

--
Daniel J. Luke                                                                   
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