On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 09:53:14PM +0000, Simon wrote:
> Curtis Maurand via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
> > That's how SCO did it. They moved everything and symlink'd everything. big PITA as I recall. I haven't looked at a SCO system in quite some time.
>
> It’s a while since I worked on SCO as well.
> What I recall about it was that when installing update packs etc, it didn’t copy all the new stuff into the standard directories - but used lots - and I mean LOTS - of symlinks. So updating any specific file was a case of the installer creating a directory tree for the package, then symlinking everything it affected.

'stow' is a program for maintaining such link farms.
It's in the Devuan package 'stow'.

-- hendrik