From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: Not going beyond symbolic links Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 19:28:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <20080721002354.GK10151@machine.or.cz> <20080721002508.26773.92277.stgit@localhost> <7v8wvpm9cl.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> <7vej5543v5.fsf_-_@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> <7v8wvc2seh.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org, Petr Baudis , "Shawn O. Pearce" To: Johannes Schindelin X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Tue Aug 05 04:30:00 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KQCJD-0002z1-KT for gcvg-git-2@gmane.org; Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:30:00 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754992AbYHEC25 (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Aug 2008 22:28:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755109AbYHEC25 (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Aug 2008 22:28:57 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:45557 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754981AbYHEC24 (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Aug 2008 22:28:56 -0400 Received: from imap1.linux-foundation.org (imap1.linux-foundation.org [140.211.169.55]) by smtp1.linux-foundation.org (8.14.2/8.13.5/Debian-3ubuntu1.1) with ESMTP id m752Sk8q021890 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Mon, 4 Aug 2008 19:28:47 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by imap1.linux-foundation.org (8.13.5.20060308/8.13.5/Debian-3ubuntu1.1) with ESMTP id m752Sjhn012342; Mon, 4 Aug 2008 19:28:45 -0700 In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (LFD 962 2008-03-14) X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-3.413 required=5 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.4-osdl_revision__1.47__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: lf$Revision: 1.188 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.63 on 140.211.169.13 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Tue, 5 Aug 2008, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > > I vividly remember being quite pissed by Git replacing a symbolic link in > my working directory with a directory, and instead of updating the files > which were technically outside of the repository, Git populated that newly > created directory. Well, that can cut both ways. For example, I vividly remember a time in the distant past when harddisks were tiny, and I didn't have insanely high-end hardware, and I was building the X server, but had to split things up over two partitions because each individual partition was too full. IOW, sometimes you may _want_ to use symlinks that way, even within one project - with a symlink allowing you to move parts of it around "transparently". Of course, these days under Linux we can just use bind mounts, so the use of symlinks to stitch together two or more different trees is fairly old-fashioned, but is still the only option on some systems or if you don't have root. (These days harddisks are also generally so big that it never happens. But on my EeePC laptop, I still end up with two filesystems, 4GB and 8GB each. So it's not inconceivable to be in that kind of situation even today). Linus