Problem with tar version 1.29 (in Cygwin 3.6 64 bit) in extracting sym-link files

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty]

On 04/10/2020 11:28, Andrey Repin via Cygwin wrote:
> Greetings, vinay Hegde!
>
> Please no top-posting in this list.
>
>> On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 9:13 PM Eliot Moss wrote:
>>> On 10/2/2020 11:26 AM, vinay Hegde via Cygwin wrote:
>>>> Hi Cygwin Team,
>>>> In Cygwin 3.6, I am facing an issue while using tar.exe for extracting
>>>> .tar.z file.
>>>>
>>>> Issue summary:
>>>> When I use 'tar.exe' to extract the .tar.z file, it extracts all files
>>>> including symlinks. But symlink file size will be 0KB & it throws
>>>> error 'The file cannot be accessed by the system', if I try to open in
>>>> any Windows editor like notepad or notepad++
>>>>
>>>> Below are the details:
>>>> -   OS: Windows 2019
>>>> -   Cygwin version installed: 3.6 (tar version: 1.29)
>>>> -   Command used to extract the tar file is: tar -zxvf jre64.tar.Z
>>>> -   'ls -l' on the extracted directory shows:
>>>> lrwxrwxrwx  1 etbuild Domain Users      8 Jul 10  2017 ControlPanel -> jcontrol
>>>> -rwxr-xr-x+ 1 etbuild Domain Users   7734 Mar 15  2017 java
>>>> -rwxr-xr-x+ 1 etbuild Domain Users 128791 Mar 15  2017 javaws
>>>> -rwxr-xr-x+ 1 etbuild Domain Users   6264 Mar 15  2017 jcontrol
>>>>
>>>> -     As you can see 'ControlPanel' is a symlink file with 0KB
>>>> (8Bytes) size. This file, I cannot open in any Windows editor. It
>>>> throws error like ''The file cannot be accessed by the system'
>>>>
>>>> -    However, I can open this file in vi editor or I can 'cat' this.
>>>>
>>>> -    Earlier, I was using Cygwin version 1.7 (tar version: 1.27) & in
>>>> that, this issue was not there. Symlink file size was 1KB & I could
>>>> open it with any Windows editor.
>>>>
>>>> Please suggest what needs to be done to fix this issue.
>>> Hi, Vinay - Cygwin can use, and create, a variety of forms of links.  Some of these are understood
>>> by Windows tools, some not.  I suggest you read in the Cygwin documentation about symlinks and
>>> decide what kind are best for you.  Then you'll need to set that up, delete the existing link, and
>>> re-create it.  I personally run with CYGWIN=winsymlinks:native, but as we say in Internet land, YMMV.
>>>
>> Hi Eliot Moss,
>> Thank you very much for the quick response & the information.It really helped.
>> I just set 'CYGWIN=winsymlinks:lnk' & I am now able to open sym-link
>> file. Both 'CYGWIN=winsymlinks:lnk' & 'CYGWIN=winsymlinks' are working
>> for me.
>> But it creates a shortcut(not the regular file). Hope it won't impact
>> my existing setup.
>> But both  'CYGWIN=winsymlinks:native' (which is default I believe) &
>> 'CYGWIN=winsymlinks:nativestrict' are not working for me. Just to
>> understand, In what OS environment/File System 'native' will work?
> Given enough permissions, "native" will work everywhere, it will create native
> symlink, but failing that, it will fall back to creating Cygwin link.
>
> LNK is an Explorer shortcut, which would work with many programs outside
> Cygwin, but not necessarily with your one.
>
> See https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#pathnames-symlinks as well as
> https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-cygwinenv.html 

Does anyone happen to know if there's a way to automatically regenerate
existing symlinks after changing these settings?

Hamish

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