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Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 12:43:17 -0600
From: "Kim, Anthony" <Anthony DOT Kim AT vw DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com, Gerald Villemure <GVillemure AT ik DOT ca>
Subject: Re: Windows 2000 Junction Points
Message-ID: <20011206184317.GA10907@nabokov.afc.vw.com>
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com, Gerald Villemure <GVillemure AT ik DOT ca>
References: <20011206155247 DOT GC8981 AT nabokov DOT afc DOT vw DOT com> <002201c17e75$4af6db90$0200000a AT dyn DOT ik DOT ca> <20011206173601 DOT GB10289 AT nabokov DOT afc DOT vw DOT com> <20011206191440 DOT A2441 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de>
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On Thu, Dec 06, 2001, Corinna Vinschen wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 11:36:01AM -0600, Kim, Anthony wrote:
> > But I mean to say, wouldn't it be nice and consistent if
> > ln -s <dir> <link> worked like linkd as opposed to creating a
> > shortcut. I am aware of "mount" under cygwin but the mount is not
> > exported to Windows.
> 
> I have checked if it makes sense using reparse points for symlinks
> once when W2K was new.  We had to reject using them since they are
> not as flexible as we need it to get POSIX symlinks.  Main reason is
> that they have to be absolute windows paths.  So they would have to
> be changed each time the mount table is changed in a way which would
> influence them.  Many POSIX symlinks are relative links to their
> target.  That's completely impossible.  And reparse points to files
> aren't supported at all.

A couple of comments: I agree the MS implementation is not
flexible.  However, if the reparse points do not cross file
systems, I believe they can be relative. I do this now and
again..

C:\some\dir\here\and\there\> linkd otherdir ..\..\otherdir

The crappy part about the MS implementation is there doesn't seem
to exist an easy way to obtain the link destination. There's no
'ls -l' equivalent.

You're right about reparse points not working with files, but
hardlinks solve that issue. I was thinking in pseudo code:

-s flag given:
    if src == directory 
        create_junction()
    else
        create_shortcut()
    endif

Anthony

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