cleanlinks(1) General Commands Manual cleanlinks(1)NAME
cleanlinks - remove dangling symbolic links and empty directories
SYNOPSIS
cleanlinks
DESCRIPTION
The cleanlinks program searches the directory tree descended from the current directory for symbolic links whose targets do not exist, and
removes them. It then removes all empty directories in that directory tree.
cleanlinks is useful for cleaning up a shadow link tree created with lndir(1) after files have been removed from the real directory.
DIAGNOSTICS
A message will be printed upon encountering each dangling symlink and empty directory.
SEE ALSO lndir(1).
AUTHOR
The version of the cleanlinks included in this X.Org Foundation release was originally written by David Dawes wrote as a part of XFree86.
Colin Watson wrote this manual page, originally for the Debian Project.
X Version 11 imake 1.0.5 cleanlinks(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
LNDIR(1) General Commands Manual LNDIR(1)NAME
lndir - create a shadow directory of symbolic links to another directory tree
SYNOPSIS
lndir [ options ] 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 containing 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).
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.
OPTIONS -silent
Normally lndir outputs the name of each subdirectory as it descends into it. The -silent option suppresses these status messages.
-silent may be abbreviated to -s.
-ignorelinks
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 option changes this behavior. 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. The -ignore-
links option may be abbreviated to -i.
-withsymdirs
If a file in fromdir is a symbolic link to a directory and the -withsymdirs option is specified, lndir will shadow the directory
tree the symbolic link points to, whether or not the -ignorelinks is also specified. The -withsymdirs option may be abbreviated to
-d.
-clean lndir will remove dangling symbolic links and empty directories in the shadow tree. The -clean option may be abbreviated to -c.
-cleanonly
lndir will do the cleaning phase only, not creating the shadow tree. The todir argument may be provided, and defaults to the cur-
rent directory when not provided.
-withrevinfo
lndir will normally not shadow any BitKeeper, RCS, SCCS, CVS, CVS.adm and .svn subdirectories, nor any .cvsignore and .gitignore
files. This option causes these directories and files to be treated as any other, rather than ignored. -withrevinfo may be short-
ened to -r.
-noexceptions
By default, lndir does not shadow files or directories whose name is .DS_Store, or ._.DS_Store, or starts with '.#', or ends in '~'.
This option, which may be abbreviated to -E, causes such files to also be shadowed.
-except
This option adds name to an initially empty list of filenames in fromdir that are not to be shadowed. -except may be specified as
-e. This option may be repeated as many times as necessary.
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 to which it does point.
XFree86 Version 4.7.0 LNDIR(1)