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Simpler fix for pax trashing symlinks on install
Authored by: DeusExMachina on Sep 20, '02 01:36:56PM

Taking advantage of the fact that ditto merges the contents of the source and destination folders if both already exist, you can solve the symlink problem more easily than you describe.

Don't bother to move the apps to where installer expects them. Instead, let it install and trash the link. Then before you restart, force-quit the installer (or just ignore it for a while). As root (to preserve ownership and permissions), use ditto -rsrcFork /Applications/Mail.app /Location/Of/Your/Mail.app. This will copy the bundle folder contents of the newly installed Mail.app "patch" onto the old Mail.app bundle, overwriting only what was obsoleted. Repeat with anything else in the /Applications folder after the install, then rm -rf /Applications and ln -s /Your/Apps/Folder /Applications and you should be good to go.

NOW let it restart you. Or, I bet you could get away with a mere dip into single-user mode, but I had no uptime to protect since 10.2.0 came out so recently :)

DeusExMachina
(and if the above isn't clear enough, it's probably a sign that you shouldn't be breaking the rules in this way until you're more at home dealing with the consequences :)



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