Re: CIFS symlinks on network share break Cygwin

[Robert Pendell <shinji+gmane at elite-systems dot org>]

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Jonathan Lanier wrote:
|>>   Yep, and it doesn't help.  It's solely down to the secureshare
|>> stuff not presenting through the standard NT api; it's only visible
|>> by using the shell extension dll.
|>>
|>>   (... which makes me wonder, could we possibly leverage that to do
|>> some useful work for us in these situations...?)
|> Shure, if the DLL has a usefull documented API and a
|> programmer is caring (or paid) enough to actually do it.
|
| Well, I for one would love to have something like that.  I wonder if
| NetApp could be poked/prodded to participate.  Makes me think also,
| NetApp isn't the only CIFS server that supports Unix features - as
| Corinna pointed out to me earlier, apparently Samba does this as well (I
| haven't used Samba in years so I assumed that it could not).  And that
| gives me a totally crazy idea - wouldn't it be nice if there were a
| standardized, open set of extensions to allow Windows applications to
| access native symlinks, attributes, and permissions over remote network
| shares?  If there were such a thing, Cygwin could totally use that to
| have seamless Unix-style integration with networks, as could other
| applications.  If such a thing doesn't exist, it should.  If the CIFS
| protocol already supports it, it should be exposed in the Windows OS.
| Who do I need to vote for to make this happen?  :)
|
| Also, it's very disappointing to hear about how the symlinks are
| implemented in Vista.  Admin access?  What were they thinking?  Seems
| like if Microsoft wants to solve their problems, they should re-engineer
| the entire OS on top of a *nix kernel and be done with it.  Kind of like
| Mac OS did...  Oh well.
|

The odd thing here is you are closer than you think.  Rumor has it that
Microsoft is re-writing Windows from the ground up again for the next
version.  In fact they already started.  News got around that the first
milestone has been released to "key partners".  Also we were joking
around about moving to a *nix like setup on the next version over in the
longhorn groups.  I came back about taking another hint from Mac OS X.
(Don't bother looking for the post -- it isn't a public group.)

- --
Robert Pendell
shinji@elite-systems.org

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