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Re: native symlink


On 3/27/2013 6:41 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin Developers) wrote:
> On 3/27/2013 5:53 PM, James Gregurich wrote:
>> Why don't you add an API call and utility to actually convert an
>> existing  > cygwin symlink into a native symlink. I'll give you code
>> that does the work.
>> Cygwin already reads and uses the native symlinks. you might as well
>> provide
>> a way to create them.
> 
> The main list is really the right place to make Cygwin feature requests.
> Patches to the DLL can go to cygwin-patches.  Other code can go to the
> main list as well.
> 
> As for why this hasn't been done before, some of it is just no one has
> done it.  But perhaps more importantly is the question of the benefit.
> There are (non-Cygwin) tools already that support this.  Also, since
> native symlinks only work on NTFS, providing a utility to create them
> opens us up to bug reports and questions about these limitations.  In
> addition, there will be questions about why yet another "symlink"
> utility exists and when should it be used.  But if you want to argue
> for such a tool, please review the previous discussions in the email
> archives (to make sure you're not covering the same ground again) and
> bring up your proposal on the main list.  Be prepared for a fight
> (ah, "robust discussion" ;-) ) though.

James,

In addition to searching the cygwin mailing list archive for discussions
on "reparse point" and "symlink" I would also recommend reading a recent
blog post I wrote on the subject of symlinks on Windows

 http://blog.secure-endpoints.com/2013/03/symbolic-links-on-windows.html

which summarizes what I learned when implementing support for creating,
using and deleting AFS symlinks within a legacy file system driver for
Microsoft Windows XP and above.

Larry's statement that native symlinks only work on NTFS is no longer
true.  They also work on Microsoft's ReFS as well as in OpenAFS 1.7.23
and above.  I will note that whereas native symlinks can be stored in
AFS, Cygwin symlinks cannot be due to the inability of AFS to store the
DOS SYSTEM attribute.

I look forward to participating in a discussion on the cygwin mailing list.

Jeffrey Altman





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