I just tested with junctions as well. Apache reads them just fine. Use this command, after downloading junction.exe from Microsoft.

newvbdir will now be a symlink to oldvbdir, including all files and directories recursively. It seems to work the same way as a hard link, if you change the contents of either file it changes the other.

The bottom line is both junctions and hard links should be tested to see if the opcode caching only caches one copy of the file or multiple copies.

Don't forget what you have to do with the config files.

I tried this first. It seems as if the cache sees just one copy, thus theorically it would work. Practically however you can't use it for vBulletin because of the configuration file which can't be separated with junctions. junctions would make sense though if you had your board files in a different disk or folder - which may become handy when moving a site.

Now I'll try the fsutil solution.

Well, you probably can if you follow the directions in this mod. You have to create a configs folder in the includes directory. Place your site configs in there and rename them uniquely. Then use the config file in this mod.

I've tried now both systems (junction, fsutil) on a clean test environment. Both systems are not cached once, but as if they were separate files. A clean 3.7.0 installation and copy produce each about 2.55 MB of uncompressed eAccelerator cached files on forum home (index.php).

• The junction feature requires to rename the config.php files and is a one-liner.
• The fsutil feature replaces the single files with a hardlink to the common files folder, and allows thus to keep some of the files in their original state. Thus, renaming of config.php and other files are not necessary. fsutil requires an utility to execute recursively. Please allow me to test it a little before releasing ;)
• Both features require to repeat the junction/fsutil calls on each copy. It is not possible to copy and paste those links, and doing so, will just retrieve the original files.

Well, if they are not caching in your windows environment, I don't see much of a point other than speedier upgrades. Getting Linux of course would solve all of this for you. ;) (Couldn't resist)...

This mod is great :)

This utility automates the use if fsutil on Windows Servers. It has been tested on XP Pro and Windows Server 2003, and comes with the full source for Visual Basic 6.0.

Please try it first on a test environment and make a backup before linking the files.

I will not assume any responsibility for your test and/or production environment! Use on your own risk.

I wonder if APC handles junctions/hardlinks on Windows the same way eAccelerator seems to-- seeing the files as the same or different files. On the other hand, maybe this could be a feature request for eAccelerator/APC, maybe something can be tweaked in their code to make them recognize that hardlinks and junctions actually refer to the same file.

very interesting. will try it.