.\" $TOG: lndir.man /main/11 1998/02/06 11:23:56 kaleb $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1993, 1994, 1998 The Open Group .\" .\" All Rights Reserved. .\" .\" The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be .\" included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. .\" .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, .\" EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF .\" MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. .\" IN NO EVENT SHALL THE OPEN GROUP BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR .\" OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, .\" ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR .\" OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. .\" .\" Except as contained in this notice, the name of The Open Group shall .\" not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or .\" other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization .\" from The Open Group. .\" .TH LNDIR 1 "Release 6.4" "X Version 11" .SH NAME lndir \- create a shadow directory of symbolic links to another directory tree .SH SYNOPSIS .B lndir [ .B \-silent ] [ .B \-ignorelinks ] .I \|fromdir\| [ .I todir ] .SH DESCRIPTION The .I lndir program makes a shadow copy .I todir of a directory tree .I fromdir, except that the shadow is not populated with real files but instead with symbolic links pointing at the real files in the .I fromdir directory tree. This is usually useful for maintaining source code for different machine architectures. You create a shadow directory containing links to the real source, which you will have usually mounted from a remote machine. You can build in the shadow tree, and the object files will be in the shadow directory, while the source files in the shadow directory are just symlinks to the real files. .PP This scheme has the advantage that if you update the source, you need not propagate the change to the other architectures by hand, since all source in all shadow directories are symlinks to the real thing: just cd to the shadow directory and recompile away. .PP The .I todir argument is optional and defaults to the current directory. The .I fromdir argument may be relative (e.g., ../src) and is relative to .I todir (not the current directory). .PP .\" CVS.adm is used by the Concurrent Versions System. Note that RCS, SCCS, CVS and CVS.adm directories are not shadowed. .PP If you add files, simply run .I lndir again. New files will be silently added. Old files will be checked that they have the correct link. .PP Deleting files is a more painful problem; the symlinks will just point into never never land. .PP If a file in \fIfromdir\fP is a symbolic link, \fIlndir\fP will make the same link in \fItodir\fP rather than making a link back to the (symbolic link) entry in \fIfromdir.\fP The \fB\-ignorelinks\fP flag changes this behavior. .SH OPTIONS .IP \-silent Normally \fIlndir\fP outputs the name of each subdirectory as it descends into it. The \fB\-silent\fP option suppresses these status messages. .IP \-ignorelinks Causes the program to not treat symbolic links in \fIfromdir\fP specially. The link created in \fItodir\fP will point back to the corresponding (symbolic link) file in \fIfromdir\fP. If the link is to a directory, this is almost certainly the wrong thing. .IP This option exists mostly to emulate the behavior the C version of \fIlndir\fP had in X11R6. Its use is not recommended. .SH DIAGNOSTICS The program displays the name of each subdirectory it enters, followed by a colon. The \fB\-silent\fP option suppresses these messages. .PP A warning message is displayed if the symbolic link cannot be created. The usual problem is that a regular file of the same name already exists. .PP If the link already exists but doesn't point to the correct file, the program prints the link name and the location where it does point. .SH BUGS The .I patch program gets upset if it cannot change the files. You should never run .I patch from a shadow directory anyway. .PP You need to use something like .nf find todir \|\-type l \|\-print \||\| xargs rm .fi to clear out all files before you can relink (if fromdir moved, for instance). Something like .nf find . \|\\! \|\-type d \|\-print .fi will find all files that are not directories.