symlinks

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Tue, 19 Mar 2002 15:36:26 -0800 (PST), Paul Eggert <eggert at twinsun.com> said:

> How about something like the following algorithm?
> It should handle the real-world cases.

>   (1) try hard link and exit if this succeds
>   (2) try to make a copy (like "cp"), and exit if this succeeds
>   (3) report a failure

With my OS-vendor hat on, we don't document `zic -l' anywhere, and if
anyone asks about it, it's not supported.  We support two timezone
installation utilities: the full-screen `tzsetup', and `cp'.

Another disadvantage to symbolic links that you didn't mention is
that, if the zoneinfo repository is not on a single-user filesystem,
then localtime() doesn't work when the system is in single-user mode.

-GAWollman