Add support for creating native windows symlinks

Christopher Faylor cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@cygwin.com
Sat Dec 24 01:52:00 GMT 2011


On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 01:38:07PM -0800, Russell Davis wrote:
>Sigh... I've already addressed all of these ponts (there are simple
>ways to handle to all of them). I'm done fighting this battle.

Actually, I don't think you did answer all of them.  But, regardless, to
summarize, what you were proposing was adding functionality to Cygwin
which would allow you to create and manipulate "native" symlinks on
systems >= Vista which would could only be guaranteed to work reliably
within Cygwin itself.  It would be possible, if you know the rules, to
create symlinks which would be usuable outside of Cygwin also.

Since the only benefit that I can see over the current symlinks is that
they could be usable under Windows, I, personally, don't think the
drawbacks to using this approach is worth the cost of further
complicating Cygwin's already labyrinthian path handling capabilities
especially since it seems like adding support to Cygwin would guarantee
end-user confusion.

cgf



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