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Doesn’t a lot of software break hardlinks on edit? I think non-database software usually completely replaces the file via overwrite or atomic rename.

Sometimes you might want that behavior, but other times you might not. But there’s no option in any app I’ve seen to choose how to handle hardlinks on edit/save.




yes, i consider this a conceptual design flaw in unix. effectively i think a better way to do this would be if the move or copy operation onto an existing file would move/copy the content of that file onto the target inode. there could be a seperate rename operation which keeps the current behavior

fortunately in my case this issue is not a problem. i use hardlinks mainly for pictures where i never want to replace the original anyways, so editing always gets me a copy which i don't need to link to multiple places.




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