Re: More on Hard Links

[Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca>]

>>>>> "Narcoleptic" == Narcoleptic Electron <narcoleptic_electron@yahoo.co.uk> writes:

[...]

Narcoleptic> Think of the non-writable, offline file as a "cached"
Narcoleptic> version of the file, and you can make a copy for
Narcoleptic> modification if you wish.  I don't see a usability issue
Narcoleptic> here.

Here's a use case: there's a shared file, "foo.txt", that I am working
with collaboratively with a bunch of other people.  It resides on a
network volume.  I decide I want a local copy on my laptop, so I make a
hardlink on my local disk.  Now I take my laptop home, so it's no
longer connected to the network.  The other guys want to make some
changes, but since the file has a remote link that isn't mounted, it's
unwritable.  The guys are annoyed at having to copy the file, leaving
"foo.txt" hanging there.  (They're even more annoyed when they find out
that I had mass-hardlinked the whole directory.)  They track me down
and beat me up. :-P

It's even worse if "foo.txt" was, say, actually a configuration file in
/etc, so you can't just copy it and make changes, because the program
won't be able to find the new version.

It's a bit of a contrived example, but not *completely* ridiculous.

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Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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