Symbolic links not backwards-compatible

[Larry Hall (Cygwin Developers)]

On 10/09/2009 10:31 AM, Thomas Wolff wrote:
> I seem to remember some improvements about soft links were announced
> recently, but I only noticed right now that those are not
> backwards-compatible.
> A link created on cygwin 1.7 and read on cygwin 1.5 will be reproduced
> as a sequence of UTF-16 bytes, starting with a BOM, and usually
> terminating soon because every second byte is zero, so it doesn't work.

That's actually forward-compatibility (a Cygwin 1.7 feature not working in 1.5),
I expect we had the same "breakage" when we switched from the "old-style"
file symlinks to the "new style" Windows shortcuts as well.  Then, as now, I
think the answer is, if you need this forward-compatibility, you'll need to use
the Windows shortcut style of symlinks (winsylinks).

This seems like cygwin list fodder to me.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?