Symbolic links in packaging

[Paul Danielski]

Is there copy command that breaks symbolic links during the copy?

[harry d brown jr]

Are you asking if there is a program that will copy the actual file that the symbolic link is pointing to? If so, you can use the "-h" option on tar or cpio.

[Madhu Sudhan_1]

Paul!
When ever you make a copy, the source attributes (other than accesstime) is not modified. If you are looking for
1) a version/option that should break the symbolic link of the source and if the source is a symbolic link, then you need to write script to do it.
2) by default when a copy is made from a symbolic link (source), target will not be a symbolic link. It will be a regular file. I think this what you are looing at.

Hope this helps.
Thanks,
...Madhu

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul:

For 'fbackup' you can use the 's-' option which will backup the object that a symbolic link refers to rather than backup the symbolic link (the default behavior).

For 'tar' and 'cpio' the '-h' option controls how symbolic links are treated.

...JRF...

[Paul Danielski]

Thanks for the help!