Rsync: To use '--hard-links' or not

Cuppa n' Brew
1

Please refer back to this recent discussion.

I am reluctant to use --hard-links.

However, I wonder it there are hidden gotchas if I don't have that flag set. I know hard links were used a lot in the past, but have "responsible" developers moved away from those, or do they still embrace those as just another tool in the programmers toolbox ?

My biggest concern is that if the hard-linked files are NOT read-only, restoring a filesystem that has those links severed, for me, implies something like "digital alzheimer's", where the system components are properly connected.

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I think it is time to conduct some experiments to assess definite and valid answer. You see, there are opposite explanations of how rsync copies hard links. Some people say that hard links are preserved, i.e. correctly copied/recreated as hard links, other people complain that hard links are replaced by source files themselves.

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