Symlinks Package For Os X

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A brief tutorial on symbolic links 13 comments Create New Account
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  • The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux). It's all Git and Ruby underneath, so hack away with the knowledge that you can easily revert your modifications and merge upstream updates.
  • I've never used a Synology NAS so I'm not sure how much you can hack it, but if you can access afp.conf if using netatalk 3.x, you can set the follow symlinks = yes for your volume. If using netatalk 2.2.5+, you may be able to set the followsymlinks=yes for your volume in the AppleVolumes.default file.
  • Apr 27, 2011 Symbolic Links (symlinks) are a function of the UNIX underpinnings of OS X to create something like an alias, but at a low-level in the filesystem. Aliases were introduced in Mac OS System 7 and were then carried forward to Mac OS X. They are a pointer to a file or a folder somewhere else, even on a server.

One big difference to note, not a name change, but file system structure. KaOS keeps more in line with most mainstream distributions (and most package development), to have regular files and binaries in /bin, /lib, /sbin, /usr/sbin. There is no use of thousands of symlinks to try and move all to /usr. Updating symbolic links with targets that are not directories. Ln -sf: The -f or -force remove existing destination files, This is used to update a link's target or destination.

thx for the tip, while fiddling with symbolic links and comparing them to the traditional Mac way of making aliases (command-option-drag) I discovered that the terminal-created symbolic link may be smaller. Do this: make an alias of a folder in the finder then make a symbolic link of that same folder. Then look at the file size in Get Info. I'm not exactly sure what the second figure is but I see this: Finder alias: Symbolic link: Note that while their size 'on disk' are both 4k, the symbolic link has only 9 bytes to the right of that while the alias has 650 bytes. Does anyone know what this second figure represents?
This has to do with the HFS+ file structure. HFS+ has a minimum file size of 4KB. This means that any file you create (even a text file with just the letter 'a', only 1 byte large) will take up a minimum block of 4 kilobytes. Isn't this inefficient? Well, yes and no. It's inefficient because you have wasted space. However, it makes finding files easier (because the blocks of data are much larger than one byte), and nearly all files in the old Mac OS were much larger than 4 KB anyway. Now with OS X, we have several hundred thousand files, but most are still larger than 4KB and the cost of hard drives is so amazingly cheap now that it wouldn't matter anyway. I hope that helps to clear things up.
Jordan

that size in bytes is how much space the file really needs. however, the smallest amount of space that can be allocated for something is 4k. so 9 bytes or 650 bytes, it is going to use 4k of disk space.

Aliases and Symbolic Links differs in lots of things. SymLinks just points to the original file location, so, if you move the original, it will not find it! Aliases points in a 'magic' way that allways find the original, even if you move it or rename it. I had a big discussion about this with A. S. Tanembaun!!! And even him could tell how Mac Alias work, it's really a big magic to always point to the right place. That's why Alias files are bigger that SymLinks. Hardlinks, on the other way, points to the 'node' (you have to understand how HFS+ works to understand this deeply) of the original file, so it IS the original file. That's why when you check it's size, it will look like the original. But the magic is that it does not take more file space than the original! You can test this in a big video file: do a HardLink and check how much of your disk was taken. Probably only 4kb (of HFS+ minimum file size). I made a video about Aliases to show to Tanembaun how it works: YouTube video link
By *NIX convention, file whose name begins with a period are 'hidden'. The Finder honors this, so if you name your link '.Classic', instead of 'Classic', you won't see an alias to Classic when you look in your 'X' volume in the Finder or when you ls /. (use ls -a /)
Bonus Tip!:
This will add a character you have to type when you cd, but if you use the right naming convention, you can use tab-complete to make it faster than ever! Do this:
cd /
ln -s /Volumes/Classic .qclassic
cd ~
cd /.qc[TAB]
The last line means type '/.qc' then press tab (with no space in between). I prefixed the volume name with 'q' because it stands for 'quick' and no other files there are likely to be called .qsomething. I used a lower case 'c' because tab-complete is case-sensitive by default.

this provides similar functionality, but not exactly the same. i prefer it because it keeps my root folder uncluttered. as it is i already have enough 'TheVolumeSettings' and 'Desktop DB' stuff that makes it look unelegant.. but to the tip:
in tcsh you can set a variable called 'cdpath' that includes a list of directories which are searched whenever you 'cd' to another directory. perhaps this also would apply to pushd as well.
currently, you can type 'cd Music' anywhere in your filesystem and if you aren't in a directory that contains a directory named Music, you will be switched over to ~/Music. if you do this in your .cshrc:
set cdpath = (~/ /Volumes)
you can do the same thing. if you have a partition named Classic, you can type 'cd Classic' and you'll be put at /Volumes/Classic. tab completion does not work here, so you'll have to type the full name yourself.

That was very cool. Using it already.

Fantastic!

aliases:
* keep pointing to the same file/folder, even when it is moved
(although not when moved to a different partition / drive)
* store a separate copy of the icon and can have different icons
* not usable from the command line
sym links:
* just store the location of the original. If it moves, they break.
If something else of the same name is put there it now points to that.
* uses the icon of the original
* Did not use to work in Classic / OS9, but seem to now - is this a 9.2 change?
The most important bit of this to remember is that aliases are pointers to objects and
symbolic links are pointers to locations. For most tasks, I think aliases are thus more useful.
half.

Of course UNIX has an equivalent to aliases as well. Rather than using symbolic links you can use 'hard' links. Just use the ln command without the -s option and you will create a hard link. Same caveats as Mac aliases - only work on the same partition, but the cool thing is, both the 'original' and the new hard link are entirely equivalent. You can delete the original, but the file will still exist, because there is another 'link' to it. You can have as many hard links as you like, and as long as you have one the file will still exist.

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I needed.
Now I can share common interface and WTF folders among 2 computers and 4 copies of WoW! No more painfully long reconfiguration days when updates come out. Now I can just change it once and it's changed on all computers in all copies of WoW.
Thanks again!

Will the App Store update an App that is represented by a symbolic link in the startup Applications folder even though the actual App is on another (always connected) drive?

Questions and statements:
The reason for the organization of files and partitions is as follows, I am an Architect that utilized software that required Rosetta, and it will not be updated. So coming from the PC world about 4 years ago, I was used to partitioning for data and having software from any directory go there. SO I probably used the wrong logic, I hope not, since this all came about by migrating to a new machine (came with 10.6.8 installed).
I did the following:
Clone of old machine in Partition #1 - Intended to Install Lion into this one.
Clone of my PC Partition put in new Partition #2
Clone of Graphics Partition put in Partition #3-'DATA'
Migrated Old Macine into Partition #4 - Keeping Snow as woking partiton.
Wanted Both partitions to go after DATA in a third Partition, depending on what I booted into. All data stays coordinated and easily backed up.
All the following is happening with programs running in Partion #1 : pre-conversion to Lion.
I followed instructions and all went well. But I may have done something that this command does not allow. I moved all my data (Folder=ARCH) to a partition called 'Data' in Partition #3. Removed 'ARCH' folder from my documents folder in Partition #1. and did the Link.
Now the issues:
1. Running Parallels and my windows-7 Cad program; everything worked, getting my data loaded (from Partition #3) and getting Virtual files loaded from Partion #2.
Then went to Quicken for windows. Loaded files OK, but when I went to back them up Quicken could not see the new 'ARCH' folder in Partiton #3. SO loading files worked but after , writing files did not work. ??????
2. Moved to Partition #4, a clone of Partition #1. Booted and went to do another link from this loaction to the 'ARCH' data folder in Partition #3. All I got in the Finder was a 'ARCH' folder with a round red dot, it was a empty folder. ???????
Was my logic wrong? Should I have loaded a clone of the 'ARCH' folder/data into Partition #3 rather then moving it from partition #1, and then link it?
Been doing the since CPM as a operating system, but no experience in Unix/Apple.
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Ray