How To Install fl-cow on Debian 10

Learn how to install fl-cow on Debian 10 with this tutorial. fl-cow is copy-on-write utility

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install fl-cow on Debian 10.

What is fl-cow

fl-cow is:

Fl-cow allows you to utilise hard links to save disk space by causing hard-linked files to be copied rather than overwritten as they are changed.

This is useful for making changes to large source trees while keeping a copy of the original tree to generate patches from. Also, if you are using the Arch revision control system with working copies hard-linked to a revision library, using fl-cow can prevent revision library corruption.

Fl-cow is an LD_PRELOAD hack, not a kernel patch.

There are three methods to install fl-cow on Debian 10. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install fl-cow Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install fl-cow using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install fl-cow

Install fl-cow Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install fl-cow using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install fl-cow

Install fl-cow Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install fl-cow using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install fl-cow

How To Uninstall fl-cow on Debian 10

To uninstall only the fl-cow package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove fl-cow

Uninstall fl-cow And Its Dependencies

To uninstall fl-cow and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 10, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove fl-cow

Remove fl-cow Configurations and Data

To remove fl-cow configuration and data from Debian 10 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge fl-cow

Remove fl-cow configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove fl-cow configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge fl-cow

Dependencies

fl-cow have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install fl-cow package on Debian 10 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.