How can I build a link for a directory aside from one file?

Question

I run World of Warcraft on Windows 7 on one hard drive and Ubuntu on another. Until I can figure out how to get my wine version working at the same framerate as the Windows 7 version, I have to do large group content on my Windows installation.

I have two copies of the installation. As of now, I link the directories inside of the primary folder in the wine installation (i.e. the Interface folder is a symlink pointing to the Windows 7 installation folder). The reason I link the subdirectories instead of the main directory is because, 2 directories deep (/wow/WTF/config.wtf), there is a configuration file that I keep different for both installations. While this is pretty much okay, it means I will run into issues when I get either installation patched as the root installation folder has executable files.

Is there a way to build a symlink, but allow a file inside of the symlink to remain unlinked? Or, alternatively, is it safe to link *.exe files that I know will be altered / patched?

Answer 1

If you install the xutils-dev package, the lndir command will create a bunch of symbolic and hard links, for the files and directories, respectively. You can go inside the linked directories and remove any of the file links you don't want. However, removing some may break the game.

As for whether the .exe files are safe to link, I don't see a problem with it, unless you need to maintain different patch sets of the game for each version. If the only difference you need is the config file, everything else can be links on the Ubuntu partition, to the Windows partition install, with just the config file being a real file. If you need to run lndir again to update links for new files, the existing files won't get overwritten.