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From: "Lothan" <lothan AT newsguy DOT com>
To: "Cygwin" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: [ANNOUNCEMENT]: Important change to symbolic link functionali ty
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 23:52:40 -0800
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> From: cygwin-owner AT sources DOT redhat DOT com
> [mailto:cygwin-owner AT sources DOT redhat DOT com]On Behalf Of Earnie Boyd
> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 11:53 AM
> To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
> Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT]: Important change to symbolic link
> functionali ty
>
>
> Guess what happens when you rename a directory that a shortcut is
> dependent upon in Win32?  I think a documentation entry would suffice.
> Perhaps some tool, perhaps even mount, could take care of modifying the
> .lnk files with absolute paths in them after a move of the mount point.

This isn't a problem with just Win32, either. I tried the following simple
test with both Cygwin and Redhat Linux 7.0:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir simlink
$ touch simlink/1
$ ln -s simlink/1 1.tst
$ ls -l 1.tst
1.lnk -> simlink/1
$ mv simlink simlink2
$ ls -l 1.tst
1.lnk -> simlink/1

The same situation can happen with .lnk files as well, so it's not that big
a deal. An additional problem with .lnk files is that the links could be
manipulated with a Win32 application (i.e. Explorer) such that the DOS path
references a different object than the POSIX path. On the one hand, it's
tempting to say this isn't going to be a big problem and can be handled as a
simple FAQ entry -- especially considering that I like the idea of using
.lnk files. On the other hand, how many people actually read the FAQ... and
who's willing to live with the idea that a link to /bin/rm.exe that was
changed via Explorer to C:\Cygwin\bin\cp.exe suddenly deleted all my files?
Perhaps an alternative (if possible) is to add a checksum of the DOS path to
the POSIX portion of the link? It may not be perfect, but at least that way
code can tell if the DOS path was changed and a warning issued.


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