ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Symlink race

Okay, so let me explain this to you in a very simple way. Do you know what a shortcut is? Like when you want to open a folder, you click on the shortcut instead of going to the folder location, right? Well, a symlink is like a shortcut for the computer. It's a special kind of shortcut that helps the computer find something quickly.

But sometimes, if two people try to create a symlink at the same time, there can be a problem. It's like if you and your friend both tried to make a shortcut to the same folder at the same time. What might happen is that one of you might accidentally overwrite the shortcut that the other person made. This is called a symlink race.

When this happens on a computer, it can cause some serious problems. If one process is trying to access a symlink, but another process has overwritten it, then the first process might end up going to the wrong folder.

So, to prevent symlink races from happening, smart people have come up with some rules. These rules tell the computer how to handle symlinks in a safe way. When a program follows these rules, we call it "symlink-safe."

So basically, a symlink race is when two people try to create a symlink at the same time, which can cause problems for the computer. But if we follow some rules for creating symlinks, we can prevent these problems from happening.