NTFS Symlinks (reparse point) redux

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 11/05/2009 10:04 PM, Linda Walsh wrote:
>      If people get used to symlinks being around as they are
> on unix, then such a 'privilege' might become a common place
> configuration -- thus my desire to see cygwin be able to at least
> recognize and treat them as symlinks (first and foremost), with
> 'creating' them left open for some future possibility if they
> become more prevalent.

If someday there's actually good support for something that can be used
in Windows as symlinks are in Linux/Unix, I expect there will be lots of
interest in getting them fully supported in Cygwin.  We're not there yet.

> I can easily live with linkd/delrp, myself
> at this point, but I would really appreciate visual aids in recognizing
> them and where they link to -- like an "ls -l" of a dir showing me the
> path of such a symlink -- EVEN if it was a Winpath.  That'd be
> an "instant" clue that it was a reparse-symlink and not a conventional
> cygwin ".lnk" symlink....
>
>      Is that more 'palatable' with that suggestion?

Let's see.  So you'd like Cygwin to make changes to recognize reparse
points, even though there'd be no way to manipulate them and would not
point to a POSIX path.  That seems like allot of extra complication to the
already complicated and slow path handling code to support a questionable
Windows feature that many people won't be able to use in Windows.  And,
of course, if we were to do as you suggest, we'd then get questions about
how to *make* one of those, why it can't be done, and how come they don't
contain POSIX paths too.  Hm, I'm having trouble seeing the real benefit here
to the Cygwin community.  That said, I (and I expect others) would *love* for
Windows to have *real* symlinks without all these hokey restrictions. MS has
been taking swings at this for years now and, in my view, keeps failing to
connect.  I think we have to fight the temptation to see reparse points as
something that they're not.

-- 
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?

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