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Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:59:40 -0700
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From: Jim Garrison <jhg@jhmg.net>
Subject: Most git executables are hard links to git.exe?
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Git comes with over 100 executables, mostly in /usr/libexec/git-core,
that all appear to be *hard* links to /bin/git, in both Cygwin and
Windows. The Windows fsutil command shows they're all hard linked:

     C:\Users\jim>fsutil hardlink list "c:\cygwin64\bin\git.exe"
     \cygwin64\usr\libexec\git-core\git-add.exe
     \cygwin64\bin\git-upload-archive.exe
     \cygwin64\bin\git-upload-pack.exe
     \cygwin64\bin\git.exe
     \cygwin64\bin\git-receive-pack.exe
     \cygwin64\usr\libexec\git-core\git-am.exe
     \cygwin64\usr\libexec\git-core\git-annotate.exe
     [snip]

This is confirmed in a Cygwin bash session showing they all have the
same inode number.

     jim@HOME10 /usr/libexec/git-core
     $ ls -il
     total 492832
      34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12  2022 git.exe
      34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12  2022 
git-add.exe
      34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12  2022 
git-am.exe
      34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12  2022 
git-annotate.exe
      34621422135881770 -rwxr-xr-x 142 jim None 3474451 Dec 12  2022 
git-apply.exe
      [snip]

This causes other Windoze programs not aware of hard links (such as even
Windows Explorer :-( and Retrospect backup) to treat them as actual
files. In the case of Retrospect (and I suspect most backup programs)
this results in backing up 400MB instead of 3MB.

I'm curious to know if there's a specific reason for this implementation
that would make it the choice over symbolic links.

-- 
Jim Garrison
jhg@acm.org