rpm doesn't install hard linked symlinks correctly

[Jeff Johnson]

PLD has discovered that rpm doesn't handle hard linked
symlink installation correctly.

Likely affects all versions of RPM everywhere.

[Jeff Johnson (n3npq)]

justification from pld-devel mail
On 01/09/2012 01:11 AM, Jeffrey Johnson wrote:
This is a hard link to a symlink which is pretty obscure functionality.
nevertheless, it's quite useful when optimizing for packaging speed
when you develop huge packages, you would appreciate faster repackaging

so instead of copying data from %build -> %install tree, one can do hardlinks to speedup the process:

cp -l build.txt $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/cp-test && l=l && rm -f $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/cp-test
cp -a$l bin help lib license plugins $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_appdir}

here it makes feature test if srcdir and $RPM_BUILD_ROOT are same disk, and enables hardlinking

now if there is a symlink in a tree, it gets affected by this bug.

also: in rpm package there is packaged only one instance of the hardlink (one in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT),
imho should decide on that actual number, not what it sees from filesystem

[Elan Ruusamäe (glen666)]

here's the mail thread:

http://lists.pld-linux.org/mailman/pipermail/pld-devel-en/2012-January/022402.html