Check Symlinks

Check for broken symbolic links.

$ check-symlinks
Broken symlink: some/path/broken_link

check-symlinks is optimized for large codebases as well as small, incremental checks,

where the full commands are respectively,

check-symlinks

fd --type symlink --exec sh -c 'test -e "$0"'

git ls-files | xargs pre_commit_hooks/check_symlinks.py

find . -type l ! -exec test -e {} \; -print0 | xargs --no-run-if-empty -0 git ls-files

while read file; do test -e "$file"; done < <(git ls-files)

and check_symlinks.py is from https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks. Regenerate the chart with scripts/gen-benchmark-chart.py, which documents the exact hyperfine invocations.

Install

pre-commit:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/jmelahman/check-symlinks
    rev: v0.6.0
    hooks:
      - id: check-symlinks

The check-symlinks hook is built from source by pre-commit's Go toolchain and has no other dependencies. Use check-symlinks-system instead to run a binary already on PATH.

AUR:

check-symlinks is available from the Arch User Repository.

yay -S check-symlinks

pip:

check-symlinks is available as a pypi package.

pip install check-symlinks

Binaries:

Static binaries for Linux and macOS (amd64 and arm64) are attached to every release.

Usage

check-symlinks [flags] [path ...]

With no paths, the current directory is walked. Flags must precede the paths.

Exit status is 0 when every symlink resolves, 1 when at least one is broken, and 2 on a usage error.

Paths listed in .symlinkignore (or .config/symlinkignore) at the top of the repository are skipped. Hidden entries are skipped while walking, but a hidden path named on the command line is always checked.

Building

check-symlinks is written in Solod, a strict subset of Go that translates to C: release binaries are a few hundred kilobytes, start instantly, and have no runtime dependencies. The same sources build with either toolchain — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

so build -o check-symlinks ./so   # solod (needs the so tool and a C compiler)
go build .                        # Go, via the gocompat shims

Windows is not supported: Solod's os package is POSIX-only.