hardlinking missing files from src to a dest: didn't work way I thought it would.

[Pierre Bernhardt]

Am 14.11.19 um 15:02 schrieb Paul Slootman via rsync:
> On Thu 14 Nov 2019, Pierre Bernhardt via rsync wrote:
> So it's looking for b/a as the link-dest directory.
> 
> Use a full pathname for --link-dest to remove all uncertainty.
> E.g.:
> 
>     rsync -av --link-dest=$(pwd)/a a/ b/
> 
> In this case, as the destination is also in same current directory, you
> could use:
> 
>     rsync -av --link-dest=../a a/ b/
Working:

pierre at in94:~/tmp$ ls -li a b
a:
insgesamt 8
257315 -rw-r--r-- 1 pierre pierre 4 Nov 14 10:53 1
257316 -rw-r--r-- 1 pierre pierre 6 Nov 14 10:53 2

b:
insgesamt 0
pierre at in94:~/tmp$ rsync -av --link-dest=$(pwd)/a a/ b/
sending incremental file list
./

sent 98 bytes  received 19 bytes  234.00 bytes/sec
total size is 10  speedup is 0.09
pierre at in94:~/tmp$ ls -li a b
a:
insgesamt 8
257315 -rw-r--r-- 2 pierre pierre 4 Nov 14 10:53 1
257316 -rw-r--r-- 2 pierre pierre 6 Nov 14 10:53 2

b:
insgesamt 8
257315 -rw-r--r-- 2 pierre pierre 4 Nov 14 10:53 1
257316 -rw-r--r-- 2 pierre pierre 6 Nov 14 10:53 2


But it's really complex to understand. Why it's not possble to simply
create hard links if source and target is on the same filesystem and
use a simple option instead of the sourc-link-complex-option.

Is this for linke backup reason if the source dir is different
from the link-dest dir because of different hosts like

rsync -av --dest-link=../a a/ backuphost:b/

where on backuphost a is an older copy and b is the new
target?

Cheers,