-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Jun 06, 2017 at 12:27:06PM +0100, Rodolfo Medina wrote: > I wish to create a link to a file that wouldn't break when that file is moved > on elsewhere in the filesystem or renamed, nay the link would automatically > `update' pointing at the new name/address of the file. Is that possible? > Besides, I wish that form of automatic update also when moving or renaming the > directory where the link itself lives.
Hm. Tough question. The most correct answer is, alas, "no". You'll have to refine your requirements to understand why. What shall happen when you modify the file's content? What shall happen when you split the file into three parts? The link now points to three files? Once you have refined the requirements, you might come up with a strategy. For example, if you consider files as immutable, you might consider storing their (primary) locations under their (content) hash, kind of what Git does behind the scenes (and some deduplicating file systems -- this pattern has come up time and again, cf. "content addressable store"). This might work as long as the files aren't huge (e.g. videos), where calculating the hash itself would be prohibitive in terms of time and consumed I/O. If files are mutable, things become more "interesting" (Git heroically tries to tackle that, and it works "mostly", but Git's "clients" are mostly source code files, i.e. a small subset of what files can be. After you're clear on what you really want to have, you may perhaps find something "out there" which fits the bill. For example, there's (at least one) FUSE based file system with a Git backend. Hope this gives you some ideas. Cheers - -- tomás -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlk2lPcACgkQBcgs9XrR2kZeHQCbBhQjduOGXwr6IGGW9xcZr2LT 5w8An0/HHctW3X3yigRxq2MJ6AGwUVR5 =5vzu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
