Linux – way to check if there are symbolic links pointing to a directory

Git just stores the contents of the link (i.e. the path of the file system object that it links to) in a 'blob' just like it would for a normal file. It then stores the name, mode and type (including the fact that it is a symlink) in the tree object that represents its containing directory.

When you checkout a tree containing the link, it restores the object as a symlink regardless of whether the target file system object exists or not.

If you delete the file that the symlink references it doesn't affect the Git-controlled symlink in any way. You will have a dangling reference. It is up to the user to either remove or change the link to point to something valid if needed.

You have a lot of constraints but there is one thing that always works: hack the source.

You can easily build your own svn for linux, though making this mod may or may not be "easy". Anyway, if you don't have any managed symbolic links, you can make a crude hack and just have svn follow them always, as if they are hard links.

If your repository does contain versioned links, and you need to check out that part of it, then you will need a more sophisticated hack which, say, uses a property that controls the feature per file or per hierarchy or something.

There might be one other choice: versioned links appeared in 1.1.0, if the behavior prior to that was to follow symbolic links then perhaps you could just run an old client.