Hardlink sub-directories and files

[Thomas Jollans]

On 03/08/11 03:59, Dan Stromberg wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 3:13 AM, Thomas Jollans <t at jollybox.de
> <mailto:t at jollybox.de>> wrote:
> 
>     On 02/08/11 11:32, loial wrote:
>     > I am trying to hardlink all files in a directory structure using
>     > os.link.
>     >
>     > However I do not think it is possible to hard link directories ?
> 
> 
> That is pretty true.  I've heard of hardlinked directories on Solaris,
> but that's kind of an exception to the general rule.
>  
> 
>     > So presumably I would need to do a mkdir for each sub-directory
>     > encountered?
>     > Or is there an easier way to hardlink everything in a directory
>     > structure?.
>     >
>     > The requirement is for hard links, not symbolic links
>     >
> 
>     Yes, you have to mkdir everything. However, there is an easier way:
> 
>     subprocess.Popen(['cp','-Rl','target','link'])
> 
>     This is assuming that you're only supporting Unices with a working cp
>     program, but as you're using hard links, that's quite a safe bet, I
>     should think.
> 
> 
> A little more portable way:
> 
> $ cd from; find . -print | cpio -pdlv ../to
> cpio: ./b linked to ../to/./b
> ../to/./b
> cpio: ./a linked to ../to/./a
> ../to/./a
> cpio: ./c linked to ../to/./c
> ../to/./c
> ../to/./d
> cpio: ./d/1 linked to ../to/./d/1
> ../to/./d/1
> cpio: ./d/2 linked to ../to/./d/2
> ../to/./d/2
> cpio: ./d/3 linked to ../to/./d/3
> ../to/./d/3
> 0 blocks
> 
> However, you could do it without a shell command (IOW in pure python)
> using os.path.walk().

Is it more portable? I don't actually have cpio installed on this
system. Which implementations of cp don't implement -R and -l? Of
course, the best way is probably implementing this in Python, either
with os.path.walk, or with a monkey-patched shutil.copytree, as Peter
suggested.

Thomas