native symlinks and non-existent targets

Jon Turney jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk
Thu Apr 25 13:15:02 GMT 2024


On 24/04/2024 23:36, Christopher Layne via Cygwin wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2024 at 10:11:52PM +0000, Christopher Layne via Cygwin wrote:
>> Based on past threads I've read I believe the issue is actually with
>> windows not allowing a symlink to be created with a non-existent target,
>> but I do know windows does not care if you break a link after the fact.
> 
> Actually, after referring to some microsoft documentation, is this even
> true?

No.

However, native symlinks do record the type (file or directory) of the 
destination, and (absent special knowledge) this cannot be determined if 
the destination doesn't exist (yet).

If I recall correctly, Cygwin doesn't care if the type recorded in the 
symlink is incorrect, but some parts of Windows do...

> If it isn't true then this seems trivial to fix.

This assertion is trivially disproven by the lack of a patch attached. :)



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