Re: how to support symlinks?

[Eric Siegerman]

Ok, you've got me curious.

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 04:06:29PM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> [...] a utility i read about
> in a 3-year-old posting called "symlinks" that uses a .symlinks file
> in each directory that will contain symlinks.

This seems to be the original reference to it:
    http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.html#SEC01

Reading between the lines, I infer that the "symlinks" program
was developed as an internal utility for the GNU web site.
Perhaps it was never formally released to the public.  That seems
a bit surprising, for the FSF of all people, but it's not
actually contrary to the GPL :-)  Maybe the program was never
deemed to be of release quality.

Clues:
  - The wording, "a simple mechanism has been implemented on the
    machine hosting the www.gnu.org", suggests a quick-and-dirty
    local utility

  - The file's location is given as:
        gnudist.gnu.org:/usr/local/src/symlinks-1.1.tar.gz
    which is an rcp-style pathname, not a URL

  - The directory part of that location is /usr/local/src, not a
    directory one usually finds in anon-ftp areas -- and
    certainly not one I recall ever seeing on ftp.gnu.org (which
    has the same IP address as gnudist, btw)

Try asking the GNU webmasters, or other individuals who've
discussed the thing in the past.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
It must be said that they would have sounded better if the singer
wouldn't throw his fellow band members to the ground and toss the
drum kit around during songs.
        - Patrick Lenneau