You may have read in some books that while making symbolic links it is better to use a relative pathway because if we move the file and link, it will not break. So, for example, if we want to link /etc/passwd to the current directory, we would do something like this:
ln -rs /etc/passwd passwd-symlink
This will create a relative pathway link. But is this necessary?
There are no clear answers for this. There are many instances of whether you can create a symlink target that is relative or absolute and it makes no difference.
It is usually better to create a relative symlink if any of these below points apply because the link will be valid in those situations:
- when the target is in the same directory tree and the whole directory tree can be moved.
- when the target is in the same filesystem and it could get mounted in some other mount location such as in a rescue live environment, a container, or another system.
However, if the following conditions which are given below apply, it is better to use an absolute pathway in the symlink.
- when the target is radically in a different directory and the right number of
../sequences are not clear. - when the user wants to point to a specific file that is not relative to the current directory
- when the user wants to be very clear where the specific file points to, while on the other hand using a relative link will turn into a maze of symlinks pointing to symlinks or that the target traverses symlinks to directories and so on.