relative->absolute symbolic links

[ibbis@…]

I'd prefer to see all symbolic linkings in LFS 5.1.1 to be absolute instead of relative (it would be more intuitive, thus easier to understand for beginners). So here is the summary of all changes I made for my own installation:

chapter 6: gcc-3.3.3

ln -s /usr/bin/cpp /lib

chapter 6: coreutils-5.2.1

ln -s /bin/install /usr/bin

chapter 6: zlib-1.2.1

ln -sf /lib/libz.so.1 /usr/lib/libz.so

chapter 6: ncurses-5.4

ln -sf /lib/libncurses.so.5 /usr/lib/libncurses.so

chapter 6: bzip2-1.0.2

ln -s /lib/libbz2.so.1.0 /usr/lib/libbz2.so

chapter 6: shadow-4.0.4.1

ln -sf /lib/libshadow.so.0 /usr/lib/libshadow.so ln -sf /lib/libmisc.so.0 /usr/lib/libmisc.so

But if there are good arguments to keep them relative, I would be pleased to get informed.

Thanks,

Chris

[Matthew Burgess]

There are several reasons why we use relative symlinks in the book:

1) Less typing _usually_ reduces the chances of typos 2) Increases the educational value of the book as it should be obvious that ln would accept full paths to filenames, so providing the alternative usage with relative paths allows us to demonstrate a useful feature. 3) The book is not geared towards beginners (although we try our best to not make it impossible for beginners to build an LFS system). As such, we assume a level of prior Linux knowledge that would include relative symlinks in an 'ln' command.