what's the difference

[Farkas Levente]

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 09:45:59PM +0100, Farkas Levente wrote:
>> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 08:37:31PM +0100, Farkas Levente wrote:
>>>> hi,
>>>> what's the difference between file eg
>>>> /usr/i686-pc-mingw32/bin/ar
>>>> /usr/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-ar
>>>> they have different size?
>>>> actually all file in /usr/i686-pc-mingw32/bin/ has a pair in /usr/bin/
>>>> with different size (and not link to each other). is this intentional or
>>>> just some kind of accident?
>>> I suspect they start out the same, but prelink stupidity kicks in.
>>>
>>> $ rpm -qlvp mingw32-binutils-2.18.50_20080109_2-8.fc9.x86_64.rpm | grep ar\$
>>> -rwxr-xr-x    2 root    root                   622560 Sep 24 16:52 /usr/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-ar
>>> -rwxr-xr-x    2 root    root                   622560 Sep 24 16:52 /usr/i686-pc-mingw32/bin/ar
>>>
>>> Unfortunately although I keep going on about how prelink is the most
>>> completely broken concept ever, it persists in all versions of Fedora.
>> wouldn't it be better to make one of them to symlink to the other?
>> actually all files in /usr/bin can be a symlink to
>> /usr/i686-pc-mingw32/bin/.
>> just to make things cleaner (should i send a patch)?
> 
> Perhaps a hard link, but if it's not causing any actual bug, I'd
> rather leave it how it is.

from a symlink it's clear to everyone that they are the same file. is
there any reason why you prefer hardlink?
anyway in the devel branch we can fix it (and the package also would be
smaller).

ps. probably the prelink only goes through /usr/bin/ but not
/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/bin/ that's why the size differ.

-- 
  Levente                               "Si vis pacem para bellum!"