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Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 11:04:14 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: New symlinks.
Message-ID: <20010228110414.A2327@redhat.com>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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References: <20010227104026 DOT B10525 AT redhat DOT com> <GAENLJIGIGCHDHJMOLPDEEOCCFAA DOT lothan AT newsguy DOT com>
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In-Reply-To: <GAENLJIGIGCHDHJMOLPDEEOCCFAA.lothan@newsguy.com>; from lothan@newsguy.com on Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 11:08:00PM -0800

On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 11:08:00PM -0800, Lothan wrote:
>> I'm not sure what qualifies as a dirty secret but the whole principle
>> of Cygwin is that it hides things from the user.  You really can't
>> make this argument if you're talking about Cygwin.
>
>What kinds of things does Cygwin hide from the user? I mean besides those
>internalized in the "kernel" that a normal user wouldn't know about anyway?

I'm not going to provide a list.  As I said, the point of Cygwin is to hide
the Windows layer from the user, presenting a UNIX look and feel.

>> I *really* don't think that the .lnk extension should show up when
>> doing an "ls -l" as was suggested in another post.  That is just an
>> open invitation to increasing mailing list traffic: "How do I get rid
>> of the .lnk extension when I create symlinks????  It doesn't do this
>> on Linux."
>
>I can see this going in several directions and I'm not certain that there is
>one correct answer. For example, is the link to gawk.exe shown as awk,
>awk.lnk, awk.exe or awk.exe.lnk? One could make the assumption that awk and
>awk.lnk are shell scripts since they don't have an .exe extension. By the
>same token, if I do an ls -l /bin/awk it should search for and show all
>combinations of the above.
>
>I can see far more confusion when someone does an ls -l /bin/awk and sees
>awk.exe displayed twice -- one being awk.exe and another a symbolic link
>awk.exe(.lnk).

I think you should play with the current implementation.  Symbolic links have
a well defined behavior.  There is no way that you'd see awk.exe displayed
twice.

In case it isn't clear, symbolic links are nothing new to Cygwin.  Corinna has
just used a Windows mechanism to implement them.


I think a logical assumption here is to enforce a rule
>stating that you can't create a link using the name of existing file without
>the .lnk extension... whether or not the .lnk extension is displayed. The
>real question, at least in my opinion, is which file gets executed if I run
>/bin/awk and I have both awk.lnk and awk.exe?

If you are asking how does this work:

ln -s awk.exe awk.exe

then it should fail, as it always has.

ln -s awk.exe awk

will probably work, as it always has.

>> I am, as always, more concerned about supporting this feature in
>> the long run.  If allowing foo.lnk to be referenced explicitly causes
>> even one person confusion, I don't think that it is worth it.  It
>> is certainly non-UNIX behavior.
>
>I disagree. I think it is well worth the effort to make this move, but it
>sounds like there are some implementation issues that need to be resolved.
>For that matter, Windows is non-UNIX behavior but Cygwin seems to manage
>fairly gracefully... .exe extensions and all.

What are you disagreeing with?  Confused users?  Are you going to be actively
supporting them?

cgf

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