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Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 19:17:39 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: New symlinks.
Message-ID: <20010228191739.A6115@redhat.com>
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In-Reply-To: <004101c0a1e4$30e010a0$0200a8c0@lifelesswks>; from robert.collins@itdomain.com.au on Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 11:11:38AM +1100

On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 11:11:38AM +1100, Robert Collins wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Christopher Faylor" <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
>To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
>Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 10:32 AM
>Subject: Re: New symlinks.
>
>> The other thing is that I try extremely hard to limit the amount of
>> adaptation that a user must endure to use Cygwin.  I'm really not
>> comfortable adding another incompatibility.
>
>This is a very valid point. On the other hand I'm not comfortable with
>the idea that I cannot access the real files for some reason (ie if I
>look at explorer and at a ls output, why aren't they the same?
>
>> >
>> >And Microsoft have been publicly slammed by the security community on
>> >this and a number of related actions because of the reduction in user
>> >environment awareness.
>>
>> Are the people using Windows aware of this public slamming?  I was
>> discussing this issue with someone who works on Windows today and he
>was
>> enthusiastic about using Windows links.  I mentioned that these links
>> have a ".lnk" extension and he said "They do?  I didn't know that."
>
>If they read or keep abreast of the number of ways that arbitrary code
>can execute on their machines, then yes. But Microsoft have a wonderful
>marketing machine.

So, this really isn't an argument, then.  The fact that Microsoft hides
extensions may be terrible but it is something that people are used to.

>> The bottom line is I don't care a fig about what is "correct".  I'm
>> concerned about surprising people.  I'm not concerned about exposing
>the
>> ".lnk" for power users if it causes confusion for the vast majority of
>> people who are not power users.  I'm concerned about increasing
>mailing
>> list traffic by 10% when it could be avoided.
>
>Ok, so when you get 100's of emails. "I made a symlink on my samba
>share, then I went to delete it via bash on the samba server and I
>couldn't find the file", you'll be _glad_ there is no sign within cygwin
>that a .lnk was created.

Those kinds of emails are actually pretty rare.  And, actually, we could
work around this problem now by just checking if a Cygwin symbolic link
file is read-only, just like we do for .lnk files.

>If you don't show somewhere in cygwin that it is a .lnk file may well
>end up surprising them anyway.

I don't know why.  If you can do all of your manipulation of the file
without the extension then there is no reason to care about the
extension.

>> >My vote: we expose the.lnk at at least one place in the interface. We
>> >also make it interoperate seamlessly for scripts/batch files etc.
>>
>> I'm not sure what "interoperate seamlessly" means.  It would be nice
>> if people would try what Corinna has implemented before offering
>opinions.
>> Or, maybe you have done this and are just reiterating Corinna's
>> implementation.
>>
>By interopreate seamlessly I mean, don't break shell scripts or programs
>that use lnks. (Obviously thats the goal, what I what trying to say is
>'show the .lnk somewhere, don't break anything to achieve that).

Um, yeah.  That's a pretty obvious goal.  Unfortunately, it definitely
means not exposing the .lnk extension (unless *possibly* it is explicitly
asked for).

cgf

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