Git comes with over 100 executables, mostly in /usr/libexec/git-core,
that all appear to be *hard* links to /bin/git, in both Cygwin and
Windows. The Windows fsutil command shows they're all hard linked:
C:\Users\jim>fsutil hardlink list "c:\cygwin64\bin\git.exe"
\cygwin64\usr\libexec\git-core\git-add.exe
\cygwin64\bin\git-upload-archive.exe
\cygwin64\bin\git-upload-pack.exe
\cygwin64\bin\git.exe
\cygwin64\bin\git-receive-pack.exe
\cygwin64\usr\libexec\git-core\git-am.exe
\cygwin64\usr\libexec\git-core\git-annotate.exe
[snip]
This is confirmed in a Cygwin bash session showing they all have the
same inode number.
jim@HOME10 /usr/libexec/git-core
$ ls -il
total 492832
34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12 2022 git.exe
34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12 2022
git-add.exe
34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12 2022
git-am.exe
34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12 2022
git-annotate.exe
34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12 2022
git-apply.exe
[snip]
This causes other Windoze programs not aware of hard links (such as even
Windows Explorer :-( and Retrospect backup) to treat them as actual
files. In the case of Retrospect (and I suspect most backup programs)
this results in backing up 400MB instead of 3MB.
I'm curious to know if there's a specific reason for this implementation
that would make it the choice over symbolic links.
--
Jim Garrison
j...@acm.org
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