symlinks/Readme.md

symlinks
========
**scan/change symbolic links**

Symlinks is a simple tool that helps find and remedy problematic symbolic links on a system.


Description
-----------

Symlinks scans directories for symbolic links, identifying dangling, relative, absolute, messy, and other_fs links.  It can also change absolute links to relative within a given filesystem.


Installation
------------

### Source:

    $ cd path/to/the/extracted/source
    $ make
    $ make install  # or 'sudo make install' if you get an error

If you would like to install to some other location besides the default of `/usr/local`, which usually requires admin privileges, then add `PREFIX=/some/other/path` to the end of your `make install`. For example:

    $ make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local

### Pre-compiled binaries:

Many Linux distributions already have a version of Mark Lord's original `symlinks` in their repositories; see https://pkgs.org/search/?q=symlinks for details.

If you use MacPorts, you can `sudo port install symlinks`.


Usage
-----

### Scan:

    $ symlinks -r [path]


### Show all symlinks:

    $ symlinks -rv [path]


### Convert absolute symlink to relative:

    $ symlinks -rc [path]


### More options:

    $ symlinks -h


Changes
-------

#### v1.4.3
- Fixed LFS support bug that caused erratic behavior on 32-bit systems.

#### v1.4.2
- Reformatted for readability roughly based on Google style guide.
- Fixed loss of precision due to implicit type conversion.
- Minor documentation updates.

#### v1.4-1
- Added Mac OS X compatibility.

#### v1.4 
- Incorporate patches from Fedora.

#### v1.3
- More messy-link fixes, new `-o` flag for other_fs.

#### v1.2 
- Added `-s` flag to shorten links with redundant path elements.
- Also includes code to remove excess slashes from paths.


Credit
------

Symlinks was created by **Mark Lord** <mlord@pobox.com>.  
Maintained by **J. Brandt Buckley** <brandt@runlevel1.com>.