Mailing-List: contact cygwin-apps-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com; run by ezmlm Sender: cygwin-apps-owner AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin-apps AT sources DOT redhat DOT com Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 23:35:11 +0100 From: Corinna Vinschen To: cygwin-apps AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: symlinks Message-ID: <20011111233511.B2488@cygbert.vinschen.de> Mail-Followup-To: cygwin-apps AT cygwin DOT com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i On Sat, Nov 10, 2001 at 11:38:38PM -0500, Christopher Faylor wrote: > On Sat, Nov 10, 2001 at 11:29:09PM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote: > >Robert Collins wrote: > > > >>When extracting tarballs, should setup create 'native' symlinks or magic > >>cookie symlinks? > > > >I thought the magic cookie (!target) symlinks were deprecated. > >Currently, "ln -s" makes "special" .lnk shortcuts; I think setup should do > >the same -- there should be no difference between the following scenarios: > > They're not exactly deprecated. I think Corinna has had second thoughts > about the current method, actually. Or, maybe she just didn't like > having cygwin interpret native Windows .lnk files. Actually I loved Cygwin interpret native Windows shortcuts as symlinks... it just didn't work well for most people. One problem was that tar didn't store these shortcuts as simple files in the tar archive but as symlink. Unpacking these archives then results in Cygwin creating Cygwin shortcuts. Any extra information in these shortcuts is lost, icon, comments, shortcut key, etc. For that reason I commented out the source in shortcut.c which recognizes and interprets native Windows shortcuts. > On Sat, Nov 10, 2001 at 11:50:26PM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote: > >Christopher Faylor wrote: > >However, I agree that cygwin shouldn't try to interpret "normal" windows > >.lnk files -- but I thought Corinna put heuristics in so that cygwin > >wouldn't do that. > > Yes, she did. I just remember her talking (as in on the phone) about > this and wondering if the .lnk files were really a good idea after all. Yeah, I really loved the way Cygwin interpreted native Windows shortcuts as symlinks. Unfortunately the crowd is using Cygwin for witchcraft and wizardry... backing up native Windows shortcuts... and they really wanted them restored the way they were before! So when we had that talk once, I was under the impression that the whole shortcut stuff has become useless somehow. Of course it isn't useless since it's really still nice to have Cygwin symlinks which are also recognized by _some_ Windows apps, at least Explorer. And less problems using these shortcut symlinks on Samba drives is another plus. > > On Sun, Nov 11, 2001 at 03:44:57PM +1100, Robert Collins wrote: > > >From: "Christopher Faylor" > > >Actually it won't - we already create .lnk files for the start menu. > (It > > >was aiming to reduce that overhead that caused my question. > > > > AFAIK, it isn't creating cygwin links. It's creating Windows lnk > files, > > isn't it? > > I had a look at Corinnna's .lnk code in cygwin, and they "ain't that > different". Right. And the code to create and to interpret them is really tiny, IMO. Actually I think it's a good idea to create shortcut symlinks instead of magic cookie symlinks in setup.exe. There's just the typical `what to do on the initial installation' problem. There's far and wide no CYGWIN environment variable so how should setup know what the user wants? Actually... I'm thinking that most `first time install' users doesn't even know what they want for several reasons (how many people really know or care for the difference of these two sorts of symlinks?) Considering this I'm thinking we should use shortcut symlinks since they are more transparent to the default cygwin mailing list user. You can clicky-clicky on them and they do actually contain something useful while doing that with a magic cookie symlink just opens the mysterious "Open With" dialog. Corinna -- Corinna Vinschen Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to Cygwin Developer mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Red Hat, Inc.