What is the Unix command to create a hardlink to a directory in OS X?

Question

How do you create a hardlink (as opposed to a symlink or a Mac OS alias) in OS X that points to a directory? I already know the command \"ln target destination\" but that on

Answer 1

In Linux you can use bind mount to simulate hard linking directories. Not sure about OSX

sudo mount --bind /some/existing_real_contents /else/dummy_but_existing_directory
sudo umount /else/dummy_but_existing_directory

Answer 2

in case there is no sub folder, you can try

ln folder_path/*.* target_folder

it worked for me on OSX 10.9

Answer 3

Another solution is to use bindfs https://code.google.com/p/bindfs/ which is installable via port:

sudo port install bindfs
sudo bindfs ~/source_dir ~/target_dir

Answer 4

Yes it's supported by the kernel and the filesystem, but since it's not intended for general usage it's not exposed to the shell.

You could probably work out which APIs Time Machine uses and wrap them in a commandline tool, but it'd be better to take the hint and steer well-clear.

Answer 5

As of 2018 no longer possible. APFS (introduced in MacOS High Sierra 10.13) is not compatible with directory hardlinks. See https://github.com/selkhateeb/hardlink/issues/31

Answer 6

Cross-posting this great tool which neatly solves the problem, originally posted by Sam:

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To install Hardlink, ensure you've installed homebrew, then run:

brew install hardlink-osx

Once installed, create a hard link with:

hln [source] [destination]

I also noticed that unlink command does not work on snow leopard, so I added an option to unlink:

hln -u destination

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Code is available on Github for those who are interested: https://github.com/selkhateeb/hardlink