Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 03/09/2018 01:27 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
that was my understanding -- as long as the files are within precisely the same directory, hard links could still be used, but any cross-directory links (even if within the same filesystem) will use symlinks. is that about right?
From what you were saying, it sounded like you thought it was a system-wide change for how linking worked.
Hard links can be used between directories on the same file system, but for a package install, since you don't know how the partitions will be configured, it's safer to to use symlinks if not in the same directory. That's what is being changed for this package.
In the git package, there aren't symlinks. Within /usr/bin, the git binaries which are identical are hardlinked to each other. And separately, within /usr/libexec/git-core, the git binaries which are identical are hardlinked to each other.
For anyone really curious about the finer details on this, I would point to the upstream git Makefile¹ and the Fedora git spec file².
¹ https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Makefile ² https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/git/blob/master/f/git.spec