Re: Using cp converts windows junctions to a cywin symlink

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Nov  2 13:57, Adrian H wrote:
> I was copying a directory of files, some of which were windows junctions.
> These got converted to a cygwin symlink.  Although I am impressed that there
> are such a thing for those OSs/drives that do not support such things, for those
> that do, I think it would be good to keep the copy a junction.  Otherwise,
> things can get messy.
> 
> Can this be corrected?

No.  The actual copy is done by the application, not by Cygwin.  The
application (cp, rsync, whatnot) is a POSIX application which has no
notion of "junctions".  From the view of the POSIX application,
directory junctions are symlinks.  So the copying application will call
the symlink or symlinkat function.  This call has no idea that the
to-be-created symlink is a copy of a directory juntion.  After all,
there 's no connection between the stat call on the source and the
symlink call on the destination.

To alleviate this partially, you can copy with the environment variable
CYGWIN set to "winsymlinks:native" or "winsymlinks:nativestrict".  This
will create native symlinks, not directory junctions, so it requires the
"Create symbolic links" privilege set for the current user, but it's
better than nothing.  From a consumer perspective, a directory junction
and a symlink to a directory are not really different.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat

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