bug#50097: gzip: add "--keep" option to keep original files unchanged

[Adler, Mark]

gzip theologians,

Just for information, up to now, pigz would merrily unlink the hard link of the 
input file, even if it has other hard links. While I’m not sure I understand 
why it shouldn’t do that (that is in fact what you asked it to do), in the 
spirit of behaving mostly like gzip, it will now* not unlink the input file if 
it has other hard links. It will let you know it didn’t do that, unless -k was 
provided. However it will proceed with the compression (or decompression) and 
create the file with the .gz added (or the .gz removed). If -f is specified, it 
will unlink the input file regardless of the number of hard links it has.

Mark

* “now” means on the develop branch of pigz on github. I have not yet released 
a new version with that commit.


On Aug 21, 2021, at 6:02 PM, Krzysztof Żelechowski 
<giecrilj@stegny.2a.pl<mailto:giecrilj@stegny.2a.pl>> wrote:

Dnia sobota, 21 sierpnia 2021 15:55:45 CEST Jim Meyering pisze:
I.e., we have to weigh "what could go wrong?" against "what would be
improved?" In this case, the weights are small on each side. That alone
argues against making a semantics-changing modification to such a tool.

The bad weight on the "for" side is 0, the counterexamples are unconvincing.

BR,
Chris