Re: install(1): Options for handling symlinks

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi Pádraig,

On 3/9/23 21:38, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 09/03/2023 16:31, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm working on the Linux man-pages Makefile, so that users can select
>> if they want their link manual pages (e.g., sprintf(3), which is just
>> a link to printf(3)) as symlinks or .so files (not shared objects, but
>> roff(7) files with a .so request; similar to C's #include).  Until now,
>> we only provided them as .so files, but many systems want their pages
>> as symlinks, so I'm trying to make it easy for them.
>>
>> That should be easy: build the symlinks, and then install them.
>> However, that seems to be incompatible with install(1), which I've
>> been using until now.  It can't install a symlink --it follows it, and
>> copies the real file--.  Would it make sense to you to add some flag(s)
>> to do something similar to what cp(1) can do?  Otherwise, I should
>> replace install(1) with cp(1) + chmod(1), but I would prefer to use
>> install(1) in the Makefile, I think.
> 
> There was a previous proposal to support --preserve,

Did that proposal include a patch, or should I write one?

> which would support this with --preserve=links.
> It's not a very requested feature though,
> but also not that invasive to implement.

Cheers,

Alex

> 
> cheers,
> Pádraig

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