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Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT]: Important change to symbolic link functionali ty


On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 05:19:53PM +0100, Bernard Dautrevaux wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Corinna Vinschen [mailto:cygwin@cygwin.com]
> > The problem is that a shortcut has to contain a DOS path, obviously.
> > The new strategy is as follows:
> > 
> > - If the target path is an absolute path save the absolute DOS path.
> > 
> > - If the target doesn't exist save a relative DOS path (who cares?).
> > 
> > - If the target path is accessible as relative DOS path save 
> > that relative
> >   DOS path.
> > 
> > - If both of above fails save the absolute path.
> 
> I don't really understand the last one; why if the target exist but is not
> accessible do you want to save it's absolute path rather than the relative
> one? AFAIRC the usual *NIX semantics is "save the target path as given, that
> is absolute if given absolute, relative otherwise).

The shortcut contains a DOS path and a POSIX path. The POSIX path is
used by Cygwin or U/WIN. The DOS path is used by native Windows tools,
obviously.

My above description is ONLY related to the DOS path. The patch tries
to resolve the path as good as possible so that a native Windows tool
can work with the shortcut either. The last case of the above list is
handling the case that the relative path has only a meaning to Cygwin
but is invalid as a _relative_ DOS path. This could be for example
when mount points are spanned over in the relative POSIX path.

The POSIX path in the shortcut which is used by Cygwin is saved EXACTLY
as it's given. So there is no change in behaviour as far as Cygwin is
concerned!!! OTOH the symlinks now have a meaning for DOS tools as well.

I can't see a disadvantage here.

Hope that clears things up,
Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Developer                                mailto:cygwin@cygwin.com
Red Hat, Inc.

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