Question

I am using Apache Subversion (SVN) on Ubuntu. I have a file which is used in several sub-projects. So I use hard links to the same file.

After svn commit, it seems that the hard links become independent files (the link count becomes 1).

Is it possible for SVN to keep the hard links?

Answer 1

Subversion support symbolic links since 1.1 (2004).

Hard links are not recognized and handled as normal files.

See this also Version Control with Subversion

Versioning Symbolic Links

On non-Windows platforms, Subversion is able to version files of the special type symbolic link (or “symlink”). A symlink is a file that acts as a sort of transparent reference to some other object in the filesystem, allowing programs to read and write to those objects indirectly by performing operations on the symlink itself.

When a symlink is committed into a Subversion repository, Subversion remembers that the file was in fact a symlink, as well as the object to which the symlink “points.” When that symlink is checked out to another working copy on a non-Windows system, Subversion reconstructs a real filesystem-level symbolic link from the versioned symlink. But that doesn’t in any way limit the usability of working copies on systems such as Windows that do not support symlinks. On such systems, Subversion simply creates a regular text file whose contents are the path to which the original symlink pointed. While that file can’t be used as a symlink on a Windows system, it also won’t prevent Windows users from performing their other Subversion-related activities.