How To Install hardlink on Debian 9

In this tutorial we learn how to install hardlink on Debian 9. hardlink is Hardlinks multiple copies of the same file

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install hardlink on Debian 9.

hardlink is:

Hardlink is a tool which detects multiple copies of the same file and replaces them with hardlinks. Amongst other things, it can be used to merge identical, duplicate files in backup trees and save space.

The idea has been taken from http://code.google.com/p/hardlinkpy/, but the code has been written from scratch and licensed under the MIT license.

There are three methods to install hardlink on Debian 9. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

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

sudo apt-get update

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

sudo apt-get -y install hardlink

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install hardlink using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install hardlink

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 hardlink using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install hardlink

To uninstall only the hardlink package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove hardlink

To uninstall hardlink and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 9, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove hardlink

To remove hardlink configuration and data from Debian 9 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge hardlink

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

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge hardlink

Dependencies

hardlink have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install hardlink package on Debian 9 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.