<div dir="ltr"><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px;margin-top:0px">Hi Thomas et. al,</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px;margin-top:0px">Regarding this line in the per package directory core changes:<br><a href="https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot/commit/c4e6d5c8be6ada8e7c60950e3b499c55d48761cb#diff-4ba3c73225b6850a34a3077526e4105cR146">https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot/commit/c4e6d5c8be6ada8e7c60950e3b499c55d48761cb#diff-4ba3c73225b6850a34a3077526e4105cR146</a><br></p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px;margin-top:0px">Using hard links is a good idea, but it also lets you shoot yourself in the foot a little bit.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px">Take this example<br style="box-sizing:border-box">PackageA builds and installs FileA to staging<br style="box-sizing:border-box">PackageB builds and modifies FileA is such a way that FileA doesn't work anymore</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px">Since it is a hardlink, FileA is now broken for all packages depending on PackageA and you would need to rebuild both PackageA to get a working copy again, even though PackageB was the one that corrupted the file.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px">Not sure if you can come up with another way that would enforce a new file created if the file is modified. Using <code style="box-sizing:border-box;font-family:SFMono-Regular,Consolas,"Liberation Mono",Menlo,monospace;font-size:11.9px;padding:0.2em 0.4em;margin:0px;background-color:rgba(27,31,35,0.05);border-radius:3px">sed -i 'expr' FileA</code> is fine, but using <code style="box-sizing:border-box;font-family:SFMono-Regular,Consolas,"Liberation Mono",Menlo,monospace;font-size:11.9px;padding:0.2em 0.4em;margin:0px;background-color:rgba(27,31,35,0.05);border-radius:3px">echo "something" >> FileA</code> will modify all versions.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:16px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px">I've thought of using unionfs, but that would probably add a lot more complication than its worth and you would have tons of mounts you would then need to manage. I've also tried inotify, but it didn't seem reliable and is also a bit complicated to manage.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;color:rgb(36,41,46);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji";font-size:14px;margin-bottom:0px">I just thought I would bring this to your attention in case you weren't already aware of it.</p></div>