LNDIR(1)							      LNDIR(1)



NAME
       lndir  -  create a shadow directory of symbolic links to another direc-
       tory tree

SYNOPSIS
       lndir [ -silent ] [ -ignorelinks ] fromdir [ todir ]

DESCRIPTION
       The lndir program makes	a  shadow  copy  todir	of  a  directory  tree
       fromdir,  except  that  the shadow is not populated with real files but
       instead with symbolic links pointing at the real files in  the  fromdir
       directory tree.	This is usually useful for maintaining source code for
       different machine architectures.  You create a  shadow  directory  con-
       taining	links  to the real source, which you will have usually mounted
       from a remote machine.  You can build  in  the  shadow  tree,  and  the
       object files will be in the shadow directory, while the source files in
       the shadow directory are just symlinks to the real files.

       This scheme has the advantage that if you update the source,  you  need
       not  propagate the change to the other architectures by hand, since all
       source in all shadow directories are symlinks to the real  thing:  just
       cd to the shadow directory and recompile away.

       The  todir  argument is optional and defaults to the current directory.
       The fromdir argument may be relative (e.g., ../src) and is relative  to
       todir (not the current directory).

       Note that RCS, SCCS, CVS and CVS.adm directories are not shadowed.

       If  you	add files, simply run lndir again.  New files will be silently
       added.  Old files will be checked that they have the correct link.

       Deleting files is a more painful problem; the symlinks will just  point
       into never never land.

       If  a file in fromdir is a symbolic link, lndir will make the same link
       in todir rather than making a link back to the (symbolic link) entry in
       fromdir.  The -ignorelinks flag changes this behavior.

OPTIONS
       -silent
	      Normally	lndir  outputs	the  name  of  each subdirectory as it
	      descends into it.  The -silent option  suppresses  these	status
	      messages.

       -ignorelinks
	      Causes  the  program to not treat symbolic links in fromdir spe-
	      cially.  The link created in todir will point back to the corre-
	      sponding	(symbolic  link) file in fromdir.  If the link is to a
	      directory, this is almost certainly the wrong thing.

	      This option exists mostly to emulate the behavior the C  version
	      of lndir had in X11R6.  Its use is not recommended.

DIAGNOSTICS
       The  program displays the name of each subdirectory it enters, followed
       by a colon.  The -silent option suppresses these messages.

       A warning message is displayed if the symbolic link cannot be  created.
       The  usual  problem  is	that  a  regular file of the same name already
       exists.

       If the link already exists but doesn't point to the correct  file,  the
       program prints the link name and the location where it does point.

BUGS
       The patch program gets upset if it cannot change the files.  You should
       never run patch from a shadow directory anyway.

       You need to use something like
	    find todir -type l -print | xargs rm
       to clear out all files before you can relink  (if  fromdir  moved,  for
       instance).  Something like
	     find . \! -type d -print
       will find all files that are not directories.



X Version 11			  Release 6.1			      LNDIR(1)
