[PATCH] adding two new options to 'cp'

[Julian Elischer]

Mike Meyer wrote:

>I'm as neutral as I'd be about *any* other addition. I don't have a
>specific reason to dislike it. But I don't have a specific reason to
>like it, either. The last time I wanted a hardlinked copy of a
>directory tree was long enough ago that most (if not all) of the
>alternative solutions mentioned here didn't exist yet.
>
>  
>
>>I suppose I thought 
>>the reasons were obvious - to get a hardlinked copy of a directory tree, 
>>one must concoct any one of a number of command lines, all using at 
>>least one of which is much bigger in size than the patched cp I 
>>proposed.  Here are some of the commands mentioned so far that are used 
>>by people to do the exact same thing:
>>
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  50056 Jul 25 23:08 /usr/bin/bsdtar
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  52600 Jul 25 23:07 /usr/bin/cpio
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  36480 Jul 25 23:08 /usr/bin/find
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  90376 Jul 25 23:06 /bin/pax
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>And here's my patched version of cp:
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  15460 Jul 26 14:52 /bin/cp
>>
>>So yes, you bloat by 160 bytes, but you can then possibly remove your 
>>need for one or more utilities that eat up at least twice the space.
>>    
>>
>
>So are you proposing that we remove one of those utilities? If not,
>then you are bloating the system. Yeah, it's only by a little bit. But
>a lot of little bits add up.
>  
>
Ok I"m going to pipe up here.

The feature is cheap, it is useful and it allows people to adopt FreeBSD 
with less surprises.
I will commit this soon unless someone else does it first.


Now go do something useful :-)