![]() ![]() There's a subtle point that, once you understand it, makes symlinks much more useful in Dropbox. Putting an alias file into your Dropbox folder will result only in the alias file itself getting uploaded to Dropbox. UNIX command line programs).ĭropbox uses various low-level operations to do its magic, and so it can't follow aliases. However, aliases are Mac specific (they were invented for use by the Finder) and don't usually work with low-level operations (e.g. ![]() An alias is usually able to find its target even if the target moves or is renamed, which makes aliases much more robust than symlinks. It is able to point to files, folders, other computers on network, and more. But they are pretty dumb if you move or rename the file that the symlink points to, the symlink will be broken, because it now points to nothing.Īn alias is a pointer (like a symlink). Symlinks can point to files and folders, can point to items on other disks, and work for almost all operations. When you try to open/copy/delete/whatever a symlink, your actions simply get sent to the path that the symlink points to and applied to whatever is found there. Hard links work perfectly 100% of the time for all operations, even if you move or rename files, but can only be used within a single filesystem (you can't make a hard link to a file on another disk), and cannot be used for folders.Ī symlink is a small file that redirects to another file or folder. So ~/Documents/myfile.txt and ~/Dropbox/myfile.txt are both names for the same data editing ~/Documents/myfile.txt will instantly change the data in ~/Dropbox/myfile.txt too, because it is the same data. :)īasically, with a hard link, the same file data exists in two places at once. Don't be scared to try it out, you can go back within the last 30 days and download your old versions from your dropbox history if something goes wrong. Unfortunately you can't hard-link a folder, so you have to resort to things like gnu cp or rsync -link-dest to make a tree of hard linked files.Īnd remember the safety net that dropbox provides. This makes hard links much more useful for sharing, but not useful for synchronization across computers. If the dropbox versions are deleted, the original hard linked copy stays on the disk. If you hard link a file into dropbox, whenever it is edited in its dropbox location by any computer, that link is broken and the original file stays the same. Hard links, however, do not function this way, and still save disk space. This option is best used for synchronization across computers, not sharing. This means that if you share a folder via symlink with somebody, and they delete those files, they delete *your* files. If you modify a file, such as edit the exif or id3 data, it will be modified on all computers. Symlinks will work exactly like you had copied the folder into your dropbox. They are very useful, but it's important to understand how they work. ![]()
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