Rustup and rustup-init are not hardlinks?

1

I have been looking at my .cargo/bin directory.
The way I understand it, the programs "cargo", "rustc", "rustfmt"..., etc are symlinks to "rustup".
There also is a file called "rustup-init"
The files "rustup" and "rustup-init" are both identical according to diff.
Why are they no just the same file hardlinked?

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2

At a guess it's due to details of the install/update process.

//! During install (as `rustup-init`):
//!
//! * copy the self exe to $CARGO_HOME/bin
//! * hardlink rustc, etc to *that*
//! * update the PATH in a system-specific way
//! * run the equivalent of `rustup default stable`
//!
//! During upgrade (`rustup self upgrade`):
//!
//! * download rustup-init to $CARGO_HOME/bin/rustup-init
//! * run rustup-init with appropriate flags to indicate
//!   this is a self-upgrade
//! * rustup-init copies bins and hardlinks into place. On windows
//!   this happens *after* the upgrade command exits successfully.

(The guess based purely on the comments. I have no rustup-init file.)

3

The comments are wrong. It doesn't hardlink rustc, etc.

Anyway, I found out what happens...

These comments on the update() function.

/// Because it's again difficult for rustup-init to delete itself
/// (and on windows this process will not be running to do it),
/// rustup-init is stored in `CARGO_HOME`/bin, and then deleted next
/// time rustup runs.

and so I ran 'rustup update" and now the "rustup-init" file is gone.

So many workarounds in the code for this language it makes my head spin.

4

Self install and update is always incredibly fraught and fiddly. Windows makes it worse than it needs to be, but it's never actually easy.

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