[Mingw-notify] [ mingw-Bugs-1464865 ] ln -s directory does not work

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Bugs item #1464865, was opened at 2006-04-05 14:13
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by rolf_ebert
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Category: MSYS
Group: Behaves as Documented
Status: Closed
Resolution: Invalid
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Rolf Ebert (rolf_ebert)
Assigned to: Cesar Strauss (cstrauss)
Summary: ln -s directory does not work

Initial Comment:
NTFS file system on Windows XP.

$ uname -a
MINGW32_NT-5.1 PD69 1.0.10(0.46/3/2) 2004-03-15 07:17 
i686 unknown

$ touch file
$ mkdir dir
$ ln -s file dir
ln: `dir': cannot overwrite directory
$ cp file dir

This should probably be fixed in the MSYS 
implementation of ln.

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Comment By: Rolf Ebert (rolf_ebert)
Date: 2010-02-21 11:35

Message:
I think the original test case is reasonable as it is typical unix
behaviour. I did not make it up. The Makefile in gcc/ada creates a
subdirektory rts/  and tries to create sympolic links in it to the run time
source files which are in the current directory. 

As long as this use case of 'ln -s' does not work the gcc Ada compiler
cannot be built in a MSYS environment without patching the Makefile.

   Rolf

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Comment By: Cesar Strauss (cstrauss)
Date: 2010-02-19 14:05

Message:
This is "broken" again on MSYS 1.0.13:

$ uname -a
MINGW32_NT-5.1 NOT2005 1.0.13(0.47/3/2) 2010-01-14 21:58 i686 Msys

$ touch file
$ mkdir dir
$ ln -s file dir
ln: creating symbolic link `dir/file' to `file': No such file or
directory

However, I don't think this test is reasonable.

On a system with true symlinks (e.g. Cygwin), I end up with a recursive
symlink:

cygwin$ ls -l dir
lrwxrwxrwx 1 cstrauss Nenhum 4 2010-02-19 10:24 file -> file
cygwin$ cat dir/file
cat: dir/file: Too many levels of symbolic links

I can't expect MSYS ln -s to support this.

If you want to test the ability to create a symlink in a directory,
perhaps a more reasonable test would be:

$ touch file
$ mkdir dir
$ ln -s ../file dir

which fails on 1.0.11, but succeeds on 1.0.13.

I see the former (IMHO unreasonable) test is included in modern autoconf
(which is how I came across to this issue). I plan to raise the issue on
their mailing list.

Regards,
Cesar


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Comment By: Keith Marshall (keithmarshall)
Date: 2007-09-18 13:01

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=823908
Originator: NO

Cesar,

Reassigning to you for info only.  It seems to be fixed in the latest
coreutils build, so I've marked it as closed.

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