cp -l hard links files instead of copying them, saving filesystem space. I need to use rsync instead of cp because of its --exclude capabilities.
So my question is, how do I get rsync to hard link files instead of copying them? Obviously, this is a local filesystem copy. I've read the docs for rsync's -H option, but it's unclear to me if this behaves the same way as cp -l.
2 Answers
The answer has turned out to be yes, with rsync's --link-dest option. It's just not obvious because it's not a simple on/off flag like cp -l, because it takes a path argument.
So, cp -l a/ b/ can also be done like this:
rsync -a --link-dest=a a/ b/I've been using for a long time. It does exactly what you are describing.
2
