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Re: NTFS Symlinks (reparse point) redux


On 11/05/2009 10:04 PM, Linda Walsh wrote:
     If people get used to symlinks being around as they are
on unix, then such a 'privilege' might become a common place
configuration -- thus my desire to see cygwin be able to at least
recognize and treat them as symlinks (first and foremost), with
'creating' them left open for some future possibility if they
become more prevalent.

If someday there's actually good support for something that can be used in Windows as symlinks are in Linux/Unix, I expect there will be lots of interest in getting them fully supported in Cygwin. We're not there yet.

I can easily live with linkd/delrp, myself
at this point, but I would really appreciate visual aids in recognizing
them and where they link to -- like an "ls -l" of a dir showing me the
path of such a symlink -- EVEN if it was a Winpath.  That'd be
an "instant" clue that it was a reparse-symlink and not a conventional
cygwin ".lnk" symlink....

Is that more 'palatable' with that suggestion?

Let's see. So you'd like Cygwin to make changes to recognize reparse points, even though there'd be no way to manipulate them and would not point to a POSIX path. That seems like allot of extra complication to the already complicated and slow path handling code to support a questionable Windows feature that many people won't be able to use in Windows. And, of course, if we were to do as you suggest, we'd then get questions about how to *make* one of those, why it can't be done, and how come they don't contain POSIX paths too. Hm, I'm having trouble seeing the real benefit here to the Cygwin community. That said, I (and I expect others) would *love* for Windows to have *real* symlinks without all these hokey restrictions. MS has been taking swings at this for years now and, in my view, keeps failing to connect. I think we have to fight the temptation to see reparse points as something that they're not.

--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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