Re: autoconf not hard-link safe

[Paul Eggert]

Robert Collins <address@hidden> writes:

> autoconf (more precisely autom4te AFAICT) isn't hardlink safe..
> 
> That is, if I have a two or three source trees hardlinked together (to
> save space) with only differing source files not linked, running
> autoconf leaves configure (and possibly other files) still hardlinked.

Can you really expect tools like Autoconf to break hard links in this
situation?  Most POSIX utilities are required to leave output files
hard-linked, so there's good precedent for Autoconf's behavior.  Even
if we altered Autoconf, that still leaves the sh, cp, etc. as tools
that won't break the hard links.