lhl ~master

Layered Hard Linker

This program recursively hard links files and creates directories in one destination directory from one or more source directories, to emulate a union mount when similar functionality is required. This program takes a list of directories and uses either an explicitly defined destination or the first item in the list as the destination directory. All remaining directories are processed in order, with all files in these source directories being hard linked into the destination directory. If a file conflict is found, the existing destination file is deleted and replaced with a link, meaning the last directory in the list will have all files linked to the destination directory. This program exclusively uses hard links, and as such is bound by the same limitations: all files must be on the same filesystem, and said filesystem must support hard links. Hard links are created using system utilities: mklink /H on Windows and ln on all others.

Usage

Given the following directory structure:

dirA/
    fileA
dirB/
    fileB
dirC/
    fileC

the following command can be run: lhl -d dirA:dirB:dirC to create this directory structure:

dirA/
    fileA
    fileB
    fileC
dirB/
    fileB
dirC/
    fileC

Before creating the desired mount, it is recommended to backup any files in your destination to prevent data loss:

lhl -d dirA:dirA/.backup -s .backup
lhl -d dirA:dirB:dirC

All options

lhl --help:

-s        --skip list of globs to skip
-d --directories list of directories to layer
   --destination directory to link files into
-c      --config plain text file containing line-seperated directories
-h        --help This help information.