I was using lidarr to hardlink my files that need to stay in a specific directory for certain reasons ;). lidarr is extremely outdated and bug reports have been ignored going out years. Not interested in such an insecure app on my server, so I’ve been handling it manually for months. It’s a pain in the ass.
Is there a way to use Picard to hardlink files to a separate directory instead of moving them?
No, there is currently no such feature. You could open a feature request at Log into Atlassian - MetaBrainz Tickets with details on how you think this should work.
The details are rather tricky I think. E.g. it likely shouldn’t create a hard link every time the filename changes, but only when the originally loaded file resides outside the configured music folder and moving files is enabled (together with the hard-link feature). Then instead of fully moving the file to the music folder it would create a hard link. But if the file is already loaded from the music folder it should be renamed and moved there without additional hard links being created.
Hard link support also depends on the file system in use. The entire file naming code in Picard is already pretty complex, with all the cross-platform special cases. So a feature like this might be for some time after the Picard 3.0 release.
I’m thinking maybe a plugin would be more appropriate than a built in feature. As you said it would likely depend on the filesystem, so full support may not even be an option. I’m going to do some more research before I decide to put in a feature request.