branching via hard links

[Matthieu Moy]

Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> Just out of curiosity: Would it make sense (at least undir Linux/Unix)
> systems to use, when doing a "bzr branch" some kind of  "cp -r -l"?

This was the recommanded method with bzr < 0.8 (cp -al). I started a 
thread a few days/weeks ago asking whether this should change (the wiki 
FAQ changed just after that). Roughly :

* knits use append, and do not break hardlinks.

* locks are not shared among branches, so one could corrupt the 
repository with concurrent accesses.

* it is not needed anymore with repositories (using --trees, you'd 
hardlink the files in the working tree, which is space efficient, but 
IMHO much too dangerous: what if you ever use "echo foo >> bar" or a 
text editor which doesn't break hardlinks ?).

-- 
Matthieu