Bug 643728

Summary:	app-portage/unsymlink-lib (enhancement for nosymlink) Usage of hard links?
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Raymond Jennings <shentino>
Component:	Current packages	Assignee:	Michał Górny <mgorny>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	Normal
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Raymond Jennings 2018-01-06 17:57:21 UTC

Just curious, is there any way to use hard links and the like instead of raw copying to expedite the process?

I noticed that the unsymlink-lib process chewed up a LOT of my I/O bandwidth doing copies and I was wondering if doing hard links on supporting filesystems would be easier on the disk.

Or indeed anything else that would speed up the I/O.

Comment 1 Michał Górny archtester

2018-01-06 19:09:40 UTC

Hard links have some breakage potential. The idea is that until --finish, the copy is pretty much disposable and the user can do anything about it, including modifying the files.

The tool passes --reflink=auto to make use of reflinks if supported by the filesystem. This is the best optimization available, and it's safe as it doesn't force any data sharing between files.