So I'm trying to create symlinks for my dotfiles (that way I can have a centralized dotfiles repository) but everytime I do this, iTerm won't read the symlinked files. Basically meaning I won't have access to any aliases or other configurations.
I believe I'm correctly symlinking the files by putting the link in the home directory and the actual file in the repository location with:
ln -s ~/.dot_file ~/Google\ Drive/Developer/git\ repositories/dotfiles/dot_file
I've also tried doing it the reverse way but then the repository doesn't have the contents of the file in the link. aka:
touch ~/Google\ Drive/Developer/git\ repositories/dotfiles/dot_file
mv .dot_file ~/Google\ Drive/Developer/git\ repositories/dotfiles/dot_file
cd ~/Google\ Drive/Developer/git\ repositories/dotfiles
ln -s dot_file ~/.dot_file
I've referenced these articles.
How to use Github to manage dotfiles?
Using bash to automate dotfiles
Using find on subdirectories and create symlinks to all files
Symlinks not working when link is made in another directory?
Help please! :)
Your first example links the wrong way (it's ln -s source target, just like cp and mv).
In your second example, you create an invalid relative link.
You can use ls -l yourfile to see whether a file is a symlink, and see where it points.
What you'll want to do is:
cd ~
ln -s "Google Drive/Developer/git repositories/dotfiles/dot_file" ".dot_file"
Before you start, make sure you don't have a ~/.dot_file, and make sure your Google Drive/Developer/git repositories/dotfiles/dot_file is a regular file with the contents you want (again, with ls -l).
Related
We have a git repository for a scientific software where we need to maintain a certain folder structure for our data files.
These folders should remain empty, everything that will be put there should not be tracked by git. However, it is necessary that those folders exist.
The solution to accomplish this was to add a .gitignore file into every directory which looks like this:
*
!.gitignore
which means everything inside this folder is ignored except for the .gitignore file.
This works very well.
We maintain all our data on one particular server.
Our scientists use this server often for their calculations.
It would be very convenient to be able to replace the data folders from the git repository which currently contain only the .gitignore file with a symbolic link to the full data files on this server. The data files on the server also have a .gitignore file which looks exactly the same as in every repository.
I wrote a bash script to do this which looks like this:
rm -r path/to/empty/data/in/repository/name
ln -sfn /absolute/path/to/data/on/server/ path/to/empty/data/in/repository
Now the software runs perfectly and you have access to all the data without copying it into your git repository.
However, git now gets confused.
If I run git status only my changes are listed as expected. It does not complain about the new symbolic links which replaced the existing directories.
As soon as I run git add . to stage my changes the symbolic links appear as new file: and the .gitignore files in the replaced folder are listed as deleted:.
This seems like a problem to me because as soon as somebody pushes his code changes that he made on the server the symbolic links would get uploaded (I guess) and the .gitignore files would get removed and thus the folder structure would not remain.
Is it possible to tell git that it should compare the content of the symbolic linked folders rather than the symbolic link itself?
PS: I know this seems like a software design issue with the static folder structure which is inside git but I do not want to discuss this here. We are all scientists and no programmers and the software is now developed for over 10 years by many different people. It is not possible to change the code to make it more flexible.
EDIT: This bash code reproduces the problem:
cd ~ #setup
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
mkdir server #server data folder (this one is full of data)
mkdir server/data
printf '*\n!.gitignore' > server/data/.gitignore
printf 'data file 1' > server/data/data1.txt
printf 'data file 2' > server/data/data2.txt
mkdir repo #repo data folder (this one only contains .gitignore file)
mkdir repo/data
printf '*\n!.gitignore' > repo/data/.gitignore
cd repo # create a dummy repo
git init
git add .
git commit -am"commit 1"
git status
cd .. # replace data folder with server/data folder which hase exactly the same content
rm -r repo/data/
ln -sfn ~/tmp/server/data/ ./repo/
cd repo
git status
At the end git status should ideally not list any changes in the repository.
EDIT:
I found a workaround: instead of linking the whole directory I'm now linking the content of the directory:
ln -sfn /absolute/path/to/data/on/server/* path/to/empty/data/in/repository/
this works because the symbolic links are irgnored due to the .gitignore file.
Drawback is that it only works with existing data. As soon as there is a new file in the server directory I have to run the bash script again.
Git tracks symbolic links. What you're trying to achieve can be done with bind mounts.
Replace the final ln -sfn ~/tmp/server/data/ ./repo/ with sudo mount --bind $PWD/repo
$HOME/tmp/server/data/
I want to delete a symlinked file not the symlink.
I'm running a shell script to take mysql backup's in the server and the latest backup date is symlinked to a file called latest.sql and when I try rm -rf latest.sql the symlink is get deleted not the file. Is it possible to delete the particular symliked file and the symlink?.
Any help would be appreciated.
I think the easiest way would be
rm "$(readlink linkname)"
to remove the file the link points to. The link will remain as a dangling link, so use
rm "$(readlink linkname)" linkname
to remove both. If multiple indirection is a concern, consult man readlink for the -f andd -e options.
I am confused about the command "ln -s".
When I do:
sudo ln -s /projects/MyProject ~/project1/code
This creates a "MyProject" folder link inside my "~/project1/code" folder.
I was hoping to have the same content on /projects/MyProject and ~/project1/code, not finding a subfolder "Myproject".
Can I do what I want with ln -s or should I look at something else?
Thanks
A symbolic link is effectively a pointer to some other file. It is not entirely clear what you want, but the following will create a symbolic link called MyProject in the ~/project1 directory:
sudo ln -s /projects/MyProject ~/project1/
That is, there will exist a directory ~/project1/MyProject that contains all the same files as in /projects/MyProject. If you update or add files to ~/project1/MyProject, they will be updated or added to /projects/MyProject.
Alternatively, if you want to keep track of just the files in /projects/MyProject, then you can do the following:
sudo ln -s /projects/MyProject/* ~/project1/code`
This will create the directory ~/project1/code which will contain symbolic links to all the files in /projects/MyProject. New files added to ~/project1/code will not be added to projects/MyProject, however.
EDIT
Alternatively, if you go into the ~/project1 directory and then type
sudo ln -s /projects/MyProject code
then that will create a symbolic link called code in the ~/project1 directory, which is itself a link to /projects/MyProject.
I downloaded the linux Tor Browser package, which is a self-contained folder. I made a symlink to the run script:
$ ln -s torbrowser/start-tor-browser ~/bin/torbrowser
However, the link was broken upon creation. All I did was run that command, nothing else, and it was broken. I did ls and got:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 synful synful 28 Jul 18 21:52 torbrowser -> torbrowser/start-tor-browser
...which is weird because torbrowser/start-tor-browser had 755 permissions. Also, I ran file:
$ file ~/bin/torbrowser
bin/torbrowser: broken symbolic link to `torbrowser/start-tor-browser'
I made a new bash script and a symlink to it to test this, and had no such problems. I'm not sure why it's only happening with start-tor-browser. It's got normal permissions and is just a normal bash script (even according to the file command).
...any ideas?
It's important to know that
ln -s SOURCE TARGET
create a symlink called TARGET which is symbolically linked to the string SOURCE. If SOURCE is a relative path (that is, it does not start with /), then it is interpreted relative to the directory that TARGET is in. If it is an absolute path, then it's an absolute path. If it is a string which could not be a path, or includes a non-existing path or file, or is otherwise not a valid path string, no matter. ln -s does not check that SOURCE exists or is even a valid path. You could store almost any shortish string you wanted in the dirent.
So when you do this:
$ ln -s torbrowser/start-tor-browser ~/bin/torbrowser
what you are doing is, roughly:
create a directory entry inside your bin subdirectory with name torbrowser.
Make that new directory entry a symbolic link (symlink) to the (relative) path torbrowser/start-tor-browser
The new symlink is a circular. ~/bin/torbrowser is linked to ~/bin/torbrowser/start-tor-browser, which means you have to follow the symlink in order to resolve the symlink. If you try to use it, you'll see:
$ cat ~/bin/torbrowser
cat: /home/joshlf13/bin/torbrowser: Too many levels of symbolic links
$
Sometimes -- often, even -- the ability to symlink to a relative path is extremely handy. A common use is getting rid of version numbers:
$ ln -s apps/my_fancy_app_v2.63.1 apps/my_fancy_app
Now, not only can I call my_fancy_app without remembering its version string, I can also move the entire folder elsewhere, without breaking the symlink:
$ mv apps /usr/local/apps
But other times -- as in your example, I think -- you need to symlink to an absolute path.
As for the permissions, symlinks always have permissions lrwxrwxrwx because the actual permissions used by file operations are the permissions on the real file. (You can think of that as meaning that anyone can follow the symlink, but that's not quite true: they'd also need read permissions for any directory they need to follow. More accurately, anyone who can see the symlink can see the name it points to, even if they have no access to the file with that name.
It is important that the TARGET you specify in
ln -s TARGET LINK_NAME
is full path of the file/directory.
I had this issue, in my case when I cd into target's directory and did
ln -s ./eclipse.ini ~/Desktop/eclipse1 resulted in broken link
But when I did this ln -s $(pwd)/eclipse.ini ~/Desktop/eclipse It worked!
the above usage given for ln:
ln -s SOURCE TARGET
is correct, but confusing when referred to the man page:
ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME (1st form)
as 'TARGET' has different meaning
Note: this can also happen due to permissions
eg. if you try
sudo ln -s /home/somesuperuser/commonfile /home/somenormaluser/commonfile
this would not work, while
sudo mv /home/somesuperuser/commonfile /usr/share/commonfile
sudo ln -s /usr/share/commonfile /home/somenormaluser/commonfile
sudo ln -s /usr/share/commonfile /home/somesuperuser/commonfile
does work
I also struggled with this, I got lots of time Linux sym link broken after creating, but solution is simple - as mentioned by rici:
If SOURCE is a relative path (that is, it does not start with /), then
it is interpreted relative to the directory that TARGET is in.
In other words:
You have this dirs:
- my_directory
-- directory_1
- other_directory
-- *you want your directory_1 link here*
Easiest approach. Got to "other_directory". From there is simple:
ln -s ../my_directory/directory_1 directory_1
Done :)
I'm trying to symlink my Library/Fonts directory with a folder in my Dropbox, so that I don't have to keep installing and figuring out which machine has the fonts I need. When I try this:
ln -s Fonts/ ~/Library/Fonts
I get this error in return:
ln: /Users/Username/Library/Fonts/: File exists
I can't delete the folder because its required by the system and thus won't let you delete.
Delete the Fonts folder (obviously you'll want to move any files you want saved somewhere else) from your Dropbox directory and then type:
ln -s ~/Library/Fonts Fonts
Note that you do not want the trailing / for that last Fonts directory.
Edit to address comment:
You're right that this only links to one /Library/Fonts folder. You might try doing this on one machine and then on the other machine(s), try:
Turn off Dropbox
Save off the ~/Dropbox/Fonts folder
Perform the same symbolic link function as on the first computer (ln -s ~/Library/Fonts Fonts)
Copy over any fonts that might not be on this machine
Turn Dropbox back on
I have not tried this so I don't know if it will work, but it should do no harm.
The other alternative that definitely will work is to set up a cron job to copy any non-existent fonts in your ~/Library/Fonts folder to your ~/Dropbox/Fonts folder and vice-versa. If the symbolic link trick works, I think that would be preferred.
ln -s -F will force the creation of the link removing the original target before creating the link.
this method will only work if the target folder is already a symlink.
Using the ln that ships with OSX or BSD-derived unixes:
ln -s -h -F /source/folder/to/use /destination/folder/to/overwrite
the -h is key here. otherwise you'll end up with something like ~/Library/Fonts/Fonts because it traverses inside that folder. the -F alone wouldn't try to overwrite, since it wouldn't see a conflict once it got inside that folder.
relevant portions of ln manpage:
ln [-Ffhinsv] source_file ... target_dir
-s Create a symbolic link.
-h If the target_file or target_dir is a symbolic link, do not follow it.
This is most useful with the -f option, to replace a symlink which may
point to a directory.
-F If the target file already exists and is a directory, then remove it
so that the link may occur.
GNU coreutils ln users:
if you're using the GNU ln from the coreutils package (linux, brew, macports, etc.) use -T:
ln -sTf /source/folder/to/use /destination/folder/to/overwrite
additionally, with the GNU ln you can replace normal folders. look at its manpage for the -t option, use it to specify the parent of the target folder:
ln -sf -t /destination/folder/to/overwrite/.. /source/folder/to/use
the trailing /.. is needed to target creation inside the parent dir, leave it in place.