[tex-live] Re: TeX Live UNIX shell scripts

[Vladimir Volovich]

"SR" == Sebastian Rahtz writes:

 >> this may be an issue for other uses/scripts, but why not get rid
 >> of such wrapper scripts, and use symlinks instead, in TeX Live,
 >> especially because maketexfmt exists and works?

 SR> because symlinks turn into physical copies on an ISO9660
 SR> CD. that's 27 copies of the tex or pdftex binaries, for each
 SR> platform.

 SR> I'd love to be proved wrong.....

No, you ARE wrong! Symlinks only consume one data block on a Rockridge
filesystem.  I have already sent you a test which demonstrated that
about one year ago:

1) create a big file (several megs) in some dir, and use mkisofs to
   create an ISO image of the contents of that dir.

2) make several symlinks to that file in that dir, and re-create the
   ISO image.

you'll see that the sizes of the images are almost the same.

Also, if i recall correctly, mkisofs documentation describes that too.
furthermore, mkisofs supports hard links, and they also will not consume
extra data blocks!

Best,
v.