[jam] HardLink rule on NT platform

[nobody]

I've installed boost and noticed that HardLink rule on
NT copies file although NT has support for hardlinks
(on NTFS, of course).

To use this feature while installing boost i've created
file hardlink.bat with following contents:

fsutil hardlink create %2 %1

and put it into %WINDIR%\system32

also i've changed line 194 of
tools\build\v1\allyourbase.jam file from

    LN              ?= $(CP) ;

to

    LN              ?= hardlink ;

these changes allowed me to save about 600 M of my
harddisk space. Not a big deal, yes, but otherwise
these 600M would exceed my disk space :-)

I think my solution is not ideal, but it could be
helpful for people. So maybe it will be included in
boost distibution, when adapted.

Thanks.
mailto: forums (dog here) green dot nsk dot ru

[René Rivera]

Not sure why this is a showstopper. Yes, we do a copy because it's the portable thing to do. Is there a built-in command for doing hardlinks in NT?

[Dave Abrahams]

I don't know if it's useful for this ticket, but I found this article about windows symlinks and hardlinks very informative: ​http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=284