Overview of the Merge and Append Procedures

1. At your system prompt, enter dcecp to invoke the DCE control program.

2. Merge or append one existing directory with another existing directory. To do this, use the directory merge command to combine the directory's information about its descendants (object entries, soft links, and child directories) with another directory's information or to append the information below an existing bottom-level directory.

3. Delete the source directory or subtree (and its contents) that you merged in step 2 from its old location in the hierarchy by using the directory delete command. Replace the deleted directory information with a single soft link of the same name to redirect lookups of the information at the new location by using the link create command.

Note: The presence of clearinghouses, duplicate names, or unreachable names in a merged directory requires special handling. The merge and append operations described in the following topics assume that no duplicate names exist in the source and target directory or subtree, and that the clearinghouses that store the master replicas of affected directories are enabled and reachable at the time the operations are initiated.

The example merge and append operations described in this topic are based on an example namespace, shown in the following figure.

Example Namespace Hierarchy

The example namespace consists of two directories under the root: /.:/eng and /.:/rnd. The source directory (/.:/eng) contains two entries: /.:/eng/obj1 and /.:/eng/link1. The target directory (/.:/rnd) also contains two entries: /.:/rnd/obj2 and /.:/rnd/link2.