Follow symbolic link

[mfn]

Duplicity version: 0.6.11
Python version 2.6.6
OS Distro and version 2.6.36-gentoo-r5
Type of target filesystem: Linux

I tried to backup the dir behind a symbolic link

e.g. /mnt/symlink -> /mnt/dir-with-version

I would expect, that the contents of /mnt/dir-with-version are backuped as well. But instead only the /mnt/symlink symbolic link is backuped.

So it would be great to follow symbolic links when they are the source of the backup.

[Thomas Danhorn (tdanhorn)]

This apparently has come up in the past:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/duplicity-talk/2008-12/msg00025.html

Even though this was dismissed in the past and there is a work-around (cd /mnt/symlink; duplicity ./ file://backupdir), it would be nice to have the symlink-interpretation options available that are common in *nix utilities, e.g. -L, -H, etc. (see "man ls" for examples). Wishlist?

[Ville Walveranta (vwal)]

This would be an extremely useful feature! A need to cherry pick items for backup from larger directories comes up often. The arrangement of files in a directory is perhaps otherwise logical or required, but often just a handful of files – such as configuration files – need to be backed up while the rest of the directory is very heavy, and should be excluded. Of course I could use include/exclude statements, but it gets messy. It would be much easier to have a 'staging' area where symlinks to the files that need to be backed up could be added, and then a single duplicity include statement to that directory would back them all up.

If there were a symlink interpretation option available, it would be extra handy if it could be activated per include statement..