There are times when it is handy to know how to create shadow directory of symbolic links.
I am thinking in particular of the software compilation process, as I have used this technique in very distant past to build X Window System.
The required application is available in X Window System source code as lndir utility.
Installation process
The easiest way to obtain it is to install xutils-dev package.
$ sudo apt-get install xutils-dev
Alternatively you can download package source code, build required dependencies and compile only this utility.
Usage
Provide only source directory to create shadow directory in current work directory.
$ mkdir ags_build $ cd ags_build ags_build$ lndir ../ags ../ags/Manual: ../../ags/Manual/htmlfiles: ../../ags/Manual/tex2rtf: ../../../ags/Manual/tex2rtf/src: ../../../ags/Manual/tex2rtf/docs: ../../ags/Manual/images: [...]
Provide both source and destination directories to create shadow directory in provided location.
$ lndir /home/milosz/Projekty/ags /home/milosz/Projekty/ags_build/ /home/milosz/Projekty/ags/Manual: /home/milosz/Projekty/ags/Manual/htmlfiles: /home/milosz/Projekty/ags/Manual/tex2rtf: /home/milosz/Projekty/ags/Manual/tex2rtf/src: /home/milosz/Projekty/ags/Manual/tex2rtf/docs: /home/milosz/Projekty/ags/Manual/images: [...]
It will recursively recreate directories and populate them with symbolic links pointing at the real files .
Additional notes
