declone(1)

✨ NAME ✨

declone — bestie's lil tool for breaking hardlinks 💅

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🦋 SYNTAX 🦋

declone file...

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so listen. You know how ln(1) or hardlink(1) can make a hard link, right? Same inode, two names, one file, iconic behavior, they're literally sharing a vibe. declone says "not anymore, sweetie" and breaks that hard link for you. 🎀

Here's the tea on what it actually does: it makes a copy of the file's contents, plus the ownership information, plus the standard permissions. That's it. That's the whole list.

⚠️ Important, no cap: it does not copy ACLs or SELinux contexts. So if you've got fancy access control going on, those bits are staying behind, bestie. 😭

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🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

Let's set the scene. Two hardlinks, made the old-fashioned way:

$ ln GNUmakefile new1
$ ln GNUmakefile new2
$ ls -li GNUmakefile new1 new2
-rw-r--r--  3 jengelh users 2687 May 27 23:11 GNUmakefile
-rw-r--r--  3 jengelh users 2687 May 27 23:11 new1
-rw-r--r--  3 jengelh users 2687 May 27 23:11 new2

See that link count of 3? They're all holding hands. 🤝 Now watch declone do its little magic trick:

$ declone new2
* new2

And boom, check it now:

$ ls -li GNUmakefile new1 new2
-rw-r--r--  2 jengelh users 2687 May 27 23:11 GNUmakefile
-rw-r--r--  2 jengelh users 2687 May 27 23:11 new1
-rw-r--r--  1 jengelh users 2687 May 28 09:10 new2

new2 said "I'm my own file now" — link count dropped to 1, and look at that timestamp, May 28 09:10 instead of May 27 23:11, because it's a fresh copy living its main character era. 🌟 The other two are still at 2, still linked to each other, which is exactly right. Slay. 👑

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

hxtools(7)

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And that's a wrap, bestie!! 💜 This lil page came to you from the hxtools collection, dated 2008-02-06 — vintage but still eating, fr fr. Go forth and declone responsibly, mwah 🎀✨💖