[PATCH] Applet installation

Yann E. MORIN yann.morin.1998 at anciens.enib.fr
Fri Oct 7 16:27:06 UTC 2005


Hi all!
Rob,

Quoting Rob Landley <rob at landley.net>:
> B) If you're going to switch to install --hardlinks, shouldn't we just yank
> "make install-hardlinks" and update "make help" to mention the new install
> options?  (Since this is a 1.1-only feature, I doubt it would have much
> impact on people.  But then I don't even know if anybody currently uses the
> hardlinks option at all.  Not sure what the advantage is.  It'd be nice if
> you could have different permissions on different hardlinks, so only certain
> applets would have the suid bit in the first place, but alas...)

Thanks for comments!

Hardlinks vs softlinks:
 - inode usage : hardlinks win
   Softlinks use one inode each, whereas hardlinks use none. Both use one
   directory entry each. So on a embeded filesystem with really limited
   space, reducing the inode number saves some space that can be used for
   something else.

 - cross-filesystem linking : softlinks win
   Softlinks can cross filesystem boundaries, which hardlinks can not.

 - filesystem generators: softlinks win
   Filesystem generators (genext2fs, mkfs.jffs2, mksquashfs, and maybe
   all others, I guess) can't recognize hardlinks, and thus store the file
   as many times as it has hardlinks.

But if you really want hardlinks, I guess you can install at runtime,
provided your filesystem is not RO.

I personnaly install links at runtime, and use hardlinks. But that's me,
and I tend to be a little bit over-complicated at times. And I have place.
So far.

So I will try to have some time in the WE to modify this, and make a patch
against svn rather than 1.01.

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

PS. Rob, as a side note, have you had time to use the command-line patch?
    Have you (or anyone else!) got some comments about it?
YEM.

--
Yann E. MORIN
Roaming in the world...



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