Support for pathlib.Path.link_to()

[JD-Veiga]

Python 3.8 has added a new method to pathlib library: Path.link_to() for creating hard links (https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html#pathlib.Path.link_to). I think that it is not supported by pyfakefs yet (v. 4.3.3).

It would be nice to mock this method since it is an easy way to create hard links.

Maybe it would be a good idea to include a FakeFilesystem.create_link() method for creating hard links (similar to FakeFilesystem.create_symlink() for soft links).

Thank you.

[mrbean-bremen]

Good point, thank you!

[mrbean-bremen]

@JD-Veiga - shall work in master now. Do you need a released version?

[JD-Veiga]

Excellent and quick work! I have installed it from master. Thanks a lot. Happy new year!

[mrbean-bremen]

Last sensible thing I did this year ;) Happy New Year to you, too!

[JD-Veiga]

Hi,

Everything is running fine until I have updated one of the dependencies of my code this morning. The update has installed pathlib2 and, tough I do not use directly it in my project, pyfakefs imports pathlib2 now. As a consequence, Path.link_to() has vanished because of: https://github.com/jmcgeheeiv/pyfakefs/blob/846ec97c0efe2f819f883f26ae90247e4ea55aee/pyfakefs/fake_pathlib.py#L126

I have uninstalled pathlib2 from my virtualenv but it is not a permanent solution for everyone everywhere.

Is there a way of adding link_to() to pathlib but not to pathlib2? Maybe a _FakeAccessor for pathlib and a different one for pathlib2? Maybe raising an exception when pathlib2.link_to() is called?

Thank you again.

[mrbean-bremen]

Ok, I had thought pathlib2 is not used anymore (it is definitely not needed in Python 3.8). Making a separate accessor for pathlib2 is probably not worth it. I could just remove the check for pathlib2 and let it fail if you use pathlib2 instead of pathlib.
This is probably the best option, because if you want to use link_to, you cannot use pathlib2, or you would get the same exception.

[JD-Veiga]

I think so now that Python2 is in EOL but... everything comes back... in subtle ways... Thank you once again.

[mrbean-bremen]

Ok, done. Yeah, I see Python2 used still quite a bit... seems to be unkillable. Though using pathlib2 with Python 3.8 really doesn't make much sense - pathlib2 has stopped developing a couple of years ago, while pathlib is changing with each Python version.