native symlink

[Larry Hall (Cygwin Developers)]

On 3/27/2013 5:53 PM, James Gregurich wrote:
> Why don't you add an API call and utility to actually convert an existing  > cygwin symlink into a native symlink. I'll give you code that does the work.
> Cygwin already reads and uses the native symlinks. you might as well provide
> a way to create them.

The main list is really the right place to make Cygwin feature requests.
Patches to the DLL can go to cygwin-patches.  Other code can go to the
main list as well.

As for why this hasn't been done before, some of it is just no one has
done it.  But perhaps more importantly is the question of the benefit.
There are (non-Cygwin) tools already that support this.  Also, since
native symlinks only work on NTFS, providing a utility to create them
opens us up to bug reports and questions about these limitations.  In
addition, there will be questions about why yet another "symlink"
utility exists and when should it be used.  But if you want to argue
for such a tool, please review the previous discussions in the email
archives (to make sure you're not covering the same ground again) and
bring up your proposal on the main list.  Be prepared for a fight
(ah, "robust discussion" ;-) ) though.

-- 
Larry