From a080f3a8695041720d04b0792a0d7c77a6be2a39 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nick Craig-Wood Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 12:41:45 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] vfs: add docs for -l/--links flag --- vfs/vfs.md | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) diff --git a/vfs/vfs.md b/vfs/vfs.md index d8f407cc4..d1d394eed 100644 --- a/vfs/vfs.md +++ b/vfs/vfs.md @@ -303,6 +303,40 @@ modified files from the cache (the related global flag `--checkers` has no effec --transfers int Number of file transfers to run in parallel (default 4) +### Symlinks + +Be default the VFS does not support symlinks. However this may be +enabled with the following flag: + + --links Translate symlinks to/from regular files with a '.rclonelink' extension. + +As most cloud storage systems do not support symlinks directly, rclone +stores the symlink as a normal file with a special extension. So a +file which appears as a symlink `link-to-file.txt` would be stored on +cloud storage as `link-to-file.txt.rclonelink` and the contents would +be the path to the symlink destination. + +This scheme is compatible with that used by the [local backend with the --links flag](/local/#symlinks-junction-points). + +The `--links` flag has been designed for `rclone mount`, `rclone +nfsmount` and `rclone serve nfs`. + +It hasn't been tested with the other `rclone serve` commands yet. + +A limitation of the current implementation is that it expects the +caller to resolve sub-symlinks. For example given this directory tree + +``` +. +├── dir +│   └── file.txt +└── linked-dir -> dir +``` + +The VFS will correctly resolve `linked-dir` but not +`linked-dir/file.txt`. This is not a problem for the tested commands +but may be for other commands. + ### VFS Case Sensitivity Linux file systems are case-sensitive: two files can differ only