如何以文件夹及其子文件夹的形式递归复制文件作为符号链接

Question

In linux or freebsd, Is there a way to copy all files under a folder and its subfolders as symbolic link ? I need to copy thousands of files into different locations as symbolic links and only have 2-3 configuration files as the actual file. The reason I'm doing this is, I have dozen of websites with with exactly the same engine code, but different configuration and look. I want to copy the engine as symbolic link so every change I make to original files will be applied to other websites as well. I can't make symbolic link to the engine folder itself, because the configuration file is under that folder, and I can't copy files one by one ! cause obviously it's not practical. Any suggestion ?

Answer 1

The command you are looking for is cp -rs /path/to/source dest .

Note that you need to provide full path to the source directory so that it can make absolute symlinks.

Answer 2

i don't know if this is what you want: (see example below)

dir one is your central "engine"
dir two is one of your website.

kent@ArchT60:/tmp$ tree one two
one
|-- 1.txt
|-- 2.txt
|-- 3.txt
|-- 4.txt
|-- 5.txt
|-- dirA
|   |-- a
|   |-- b
|   `-- c
|-- dirB
`-- dirC
two
|-- myConf_a.conf
|-- myConf_b.conf
|-- myConf_c.conf
|-- myConf_d.conf
`-- myConf_e.conf

kent@ArchT60:/tmp$ ln -s /tmp/one/* /tmp/two/.

kent$  tree -l /tmp/two
/tmp/two
|-- 1.txt -> /tmp/one/1.txt
|-- 2.txt -> /tmp/one/2.txt
|-- 3.txt -> /tmp/one/3.txt
|-- 4.txt -> /tmp/one/4.txt
|-- 5.txt -> /tmp/one/5.txt
|-- dirA -> /tmp/one/dirA
|   |-- a
|   |-- b
|   `-- c
|-- dirB -> /tmp/one/dirB
|-- dirC -> /tmp/one/dirC
|-- myConf_a.conf
|-- myConf_b.conf
|-- myConf_c.conf
|-- myConf_d.conf
`-- myConf_e.conf