Scenario 13: Choose a materialization strategy (symlink vs copy)

Frequency: Occasional · Status: Shipped

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Use this when you need to decide whether a project's alias harness outputs are written as symlinks (atomic, always in sync with the main reference) or copies (independent files that can be committed and reviewed).

Typical commands:

harnesstap harness project set --project . --materialization-strategy symlink-preferred
harnesstap harness project set --project . --materialization-strategy copy
harnesstap harness project status --project .

When to choose which:

• symlink-preferred is right when you want one source of truth on disk and the OS supports symlinks. Aliases stay in lockstep with the main harness for free.
• copy is right when alias files need to be committed and code-reviewed independently (some teams require this), when the filesystem does not support symlinks (some Windows setups), or when downstream consumers don't follow symlinks.