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Re: question on symbolic links and windows

From: Paul Koning <Paul_Koning_at_dell.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:56:13 -0400

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Whitson <steven.whitson_at_gmail.com> writes:

>>> For example, my repsoitroy has the following structure as a test
>>> ./test.txt ./testfolder/test.txt -> ../test.txt
>>>
>>> When this is checked out on windows the file .\test.txt is fine,
>>> but the file testfolder\test.txt contains the text "link
>>> ../test.txt".
>>>
>>> What am I doing wrong?
>>>
>> Nothing. Symlinks don't work on Windows. NTFS lacked the ability
>> to create true *NIX-like symlinks until Vista was released, and
>> Subversion doesn't attempt to guess at whether that functionality
>> is available or not - it assumes that it's not if you're on
>> Windows.
>>
 Steve> From the svn book: /When a symlink is committed into a
 Steve> Subversion repository, Subversion remembers that the file was
 Steve> in fact a symlink, as well as the object to which the symlink
 Steve> "points." When that symlink is checked out to another working
 Steve> copy on a non-Windows system, Subversion reconstructs a real
 Steve> filesystem-level symbolic link from the versioned symlink. But
 Steve> that doesn't in any way limit the usability of working copies
 Steve> on systems such as Windows that do not support symlinks. On
 Steve> such systems, Subversion simply creates a regular text file
 Steve> whose contents are the path to which to the original symlink
 Steve> pointed. While that file can't be used as a symlink on a
 Steve> Windows system, it also won't prevent Windows users from
 Steve> performing their other Subversion-related activities./

 Steve> I expect and want a regular file in place of the symbolic link
 Steve> on windows (as stated in the book). How can I achieve this?

You are getting what the book describes.

If what you want is a second copy of the linked-to file, that would be
a new feature.

It would also be a very messy thing to do, because you'd have two
independent copies of the file on Windows but only one on other
operating systems. So on Windows you could create a working directory
where the two are different. They might perhaps *both* be modified
in different ways.

When you commit those changes, what would you expect to happen? I
can't think of any sensible answer.

      paul

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Received on 2008-09-17 19:57:55 CEST

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