[klodolph]

Could you elaborate? Seems like there’s a bunch of things that can’t be batched together on an ordinary file, without involving symlinks.

[masklinn]

What they (and TFA) are saying is that there is no transactional view of the FS. If you could work in “repeatable read” (only and always see the state of the FS before you started the transaction) symlink races wouldn’t be possible.

[klodolph]

Right, but there is no transactional view with or without symlinks.

[masklinn]

Without symlinks it doesn't matter, because by definition a symlink race requires a symlink to be involved.