TRACELINKS(1)

📦
version 1.1.0 · 2 versions
, in nixpkgs unstable

okay so bestie, welcome to tracelinks (that's the manual page TRACELINKS(1), section 1, user commands, mwah) — the little tool that snitches on every symlink you cross on your way to a file. no cap, it's iconic.

✨ NAME ✨

tracelinks — reports on symbolic links encountered in path traversals 💫

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tracelinks [OPTION]... PATH [PATH]...

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so the tracelinks command takes a whole list of paths and traverses each one in turn, lowkey gossiping about every symbolic link it finds in those path traversals. it's giving detective energy fr fr 🔍

tracelinks detects and reports on dangling links and circular links it bumps into along the way — and when it does, it exits with a nonzero return code. yes queen, it will absolutely tell on your broken links 💀

when it reports the final element hit in the path traversal, tracelinks prints the realpath of the file along with its file type. cute, informative, slay 🫶

🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

Report on symbolic links encountered in path traversals. (that's the whole vibe of the section, keeping it 💜)

  • -a, --absolute — report paths as absolute paths 🧚
  • -k, --keep-going — keep reporting on other paths after an error, because quitting at the first oopsie is not main character energy 💅
  • -f, --fstype — print the filesystem type for each path reported 🌈
  • -h, --help — print this help message 🎀
  • -d, --debug — print extra debugging to STDERR 🙈
  • -v, --version — print version string ⭐

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

  • 0 — all paths were traversed successfully. we love a clean run ✨
  • nonzero — at least one path could not be fully traversed, for example because of a dangling link, a circular link, or a missing file. not me crying over a missing file 😭

🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

tracelinks /usr/bin/awk

Trace every symbolic link crossed while resolving /usr/bin/awk, printing the final target and its file type. honestly iconic behavior 👑

tracelinks -f ./result

Resolve the result symlink left behind by a build and annotate each reported path with the filesystem it lives on. build artifacts found quaking 🏗️

tracelinks -k a b c

Trace several paths in one invocation, continuing past any path that produces an error instead of stopping at the first failure. resilience queen 👑 keep going bestie, we believe in you 🫶

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

ln(1), readlink(1), realpath(1), stat(1), namei(1) — the whole friend group, go say hi 💖

ngl bestie, if you've got a dangling or circular link in there, tracelinks will find it. it does not miss. periodt 💅

and that's the page!! 🎀 this was tracelinks version 1.1.0, dated January 1980 (yes, the timestamp is ancient, she's vintage, we stan 🌸) — mwah, go trace some paths 💜

📦 where this page comes from