Issue #8876: distutils now falls back to copying files when hard linking doesn't work.
This allows use with special filesystems such as VirtualBox shared folders.
diff --git a/Lib/distutils/file_util.py b/Lib/distutils/file_util.py
index b9f0786..3b236e1 100644
--- a/Lib/distutils/file_util.py
+++ b/Lib/distutils/file_util.py
@@ -85,7 +85,8 @@
(os.symlink) instead of copying: set it to "hard" or "sym"; if it is
None (the default), files are copied. Don't set 'link' on systems that
don't support it: 'copy_file()' doesn't check if hard or symbolic
- linking is available.
+ linking is available. If hardlink fails, falls back to
+ _copy_file_contents().
Under Mac OS, uses the native file copy function in macostools; on
other systems, uses '_copy_file_contents()' to copy file contents.
@@ -137,24 +138,31 @@
# (Unix only, of course, but that's the caller's responsibility)
if link == 'hard':
if not (os.path.exists(dst) and os.path.samefile(src, dst)):
- os.link(src, dst)
+ try:
+ os.link(src, dst)
+ return (dst, 1)
+ except OSError:
+ # If hard linking fails, fall back on copying file
+ # (some special filesystems don't support hard linking
+ # even under Unix, see issue #8876).
+ pass
elif link == 'sym':
if not (os.path.exists(dst) and os.path.samefile(src, dst)):
os.symlink(src, dst)
+ return (dst, 1)
# Otherwise (non-Mac, not linking), copy the file contents and
# (optionally) copy the times and mode.
- else:
- _copy_file_contents(src, dst)
- if preserve_mode or preserve_times:
- st = os.stat(src)
+ _copy_file_contents(src, dst)
+ if preserve_mode or preserve_times:
+ st = os.stat(src)
- # According to David Ascher <da@ski.org>, utime() should be done
- # before chmod() (at least under NT).
- if preserve_times:
- os.utime(dst, (st[ST_ATIME], st[ST_MTIME]))
- if preserve_mode:
- os.chmod(dst, S_IMODE(st[ST_MODE]))
+ # According to David Ascher <da@ski.org>, utime() should be done
+ # before chmod() (at least under NT).
+ if preserve_times:
+ os.utime(dst, (st[ST_ATIME], st[ST_MTIME]))
+ if preserve_mode:
+ os.chmod(dst, S_IMODE(st[ST_MODE]))
return (dst, 1)