synchronize links

[Gerrit Kuehn]

Hello,

I have a question concerning the handling of symlinks with the
synchronize module:

What exactly is the difference between the "link" and "copy_link"
options, and how are they intended to be used? The docs say

---
copy_links: Copy symlinks as the item that they point to (the referent)
is copied, rather than the symlink.

links: Copy symlinks as symlinks.
---

This looks rather redundant to me (plus I do not really understand what
the "is copied" part for copy_links should mean).

I have a symlink on the source side that I want to see copied as file.
Setting "links" to "no" does not yield the desired behaviour. I
get a symlink on the destination side.
Setting "copy_links" to "yes" does the trick (but I'd rather expect it
to do the opposite, i.e., COPY the LINK ?!).

This is probably all working as designed, but I can't say I
understand...


cu
Gerrit

[Felix Fontein]

Hi,

> I have a question concerning the handling of symlinks with the
> synchronize module:
>
> What exactly is the difference between the "link" and "copy_link"
> options, and how are they intended to be used? The docs say
>
> ---
> copy_links: Copy symlinks as the item that they point to (the
> referent) is copied, rather than the symlink.
>
> links: Copy symlinks as symlinks.
> ---
>
> This looks rather redundant to me (plus I do not really understand
> what the "is copied" part for copy_links should mean).

the formulation is a bit broken. The "is copied" shouldn't be there.

Feel free to create a PR to remove that part. (The line in question is
here:
https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.posix/blob/main/plugins/modules/synchronize.py#L99)

The naming of these two options comes from rsync, BTW. It's man page
says:

--links, -l copy symlinks as symlinks
--copy-links, -L transform symlink into referent file/dir

Or in longer form:

--links, -l
When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the
destination.

--copy-links, -L
When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the
referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. [...]

Cheers,
Felix

[Gerrit Kuehn]

On Fri, 18 Sep 2020 09:41:56 +0200
"'Felix Fontein' via Ansible Development"

<ansibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> > ---
> > copy_links: Copy symlinks as the item that they point to (the
> > referent) is copied, rather than the symlink.
> >
> > links: Copy symlinks as symlinks.
> > ---
> >
> > This looks rather redundant to me (plus I do not really understand
> > what the "is copied" part for copy_links should mean).

> the formulation is a bit broken. The "is copied" shouldn't be there.
> Feel free to create a PR to remove that part. (The line in question is
> here:
> https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.posix/blob/main/plugins/modules/synchronize.py#L99)

Ok, I'll look into that.

> --links, -l
> When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the
> destination.
>
> --copy-links, -L
> When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the
> referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. [...]

I still don't understand why both exist, they appear to be mutually
exclusive.
Or is --links intended to copy links, and --copy-links to copy files,
i.e., they are designed to achieve the opposite of each other? In that
case, I do not understand why ansible offers to turn off or on both of
them independently. That might also explain why setting "links: no" in
ansible does not change the behaviour as expected (because the
underlying rsync option is just removed, but that does not force any
other behaviour).


cu
Gerrit