[Mingw-users] perl symlink oddity

[Ralf W. <Ral...@gm...>]

Hello mingw-users,

I've encountered an oddity with MSYS perl: it claims to support symlink,
but failure to create a symlink due to missing target directory is not
diagnosed:

$ perl -e 'print eval { symlink("",""); 1} . "\n";'
1
$ rm -rf sub bar
$ touch foo
$ perl -e '$!=0; print symlink ("foo", "bar") . ", $!\n";'
1, No such file or directory
$ ls bar
bar
$ rm -f bar
$ perl -e '$!=0; print symlink ("foo", "sub/bar") . ", $!\n";'
1, No such file or directory
$ ls -l bar sub
ls: bar: No such file or directory
ls: sub: No such file or directory
$

This causes the symlink.test from Automake to fail.

Thanks,
Ralf

$ perl -V
Summary of my perl5 (revision 5.0 version 6 subversion 1) configuration:
  Platform:
    osname=msys, osvers=1.0.11(0.4632), archname=msys
    uname='msys_nt-5.1 nothing 1.0.11(0.4632) 2007-07-29 17:16 i686 msys '
    config_args='-de'
    hint=recommended, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define
    usethreads=undef use5005threads=undef useithreads=undef usemultiplicity=undef
    useperlio=undef d_sfio=undef uselargefiles=define usesocks=undef
    use64bitint=undef use64bitall=undef uselongdouble=undef
  Compiler:
    cc='gcc', ccflags ='-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV -fnative-struct -fno-strict-aliasing',
    optimize='-O3 -s -mcpu=pentium',
    cppflags='-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV -fnative-struct -fno-strict-aliasing'
    ccversion='', gccversion='2.95.3-1', gccosandvers=''
    intsize=4, longsize=4, ptrsize=4, doublesize=8, byteorder=1234
    d_longlong=define, longlongsize=8, d_longdbl=define, longdblsize=12
    ivtype='long', ivsize=4, nvtype='double', nvsize=8, Off_t='off_t', lseeksize=4
    alignbytes=8, usemymalloc=y, prototype=define
  Linker and Libraries:
    ld='ld2', ldflags =' -s'
    libpth=/usr/lib /lib
    libs=-lgdbm -lcrypt -liconv -lgdbm_compat
    perllibs=-lcrypt -liconv -lgdbm_compat
    libc=/usr/lib/libmsys-1.0.dll.a, so=dll, useshrplib=true, libperl=libperl.dll.a
  Dynamic Linking:
    dlsrc=dl_dlopen.xs, dlext=dll, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags=' -s'
    cccdlflags=' ', lddlflags=' -s'


Characteristics of this binary (from libperl): 
  Compile-time options: USE_LARGE_FILES
  Built under msys
  Compiled at Mar 25 2008 01:17:15
  @INC:
    /usr/lib/perl5/5.6/msys
    /usr/lib/perl5/5.6
    /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6/msys
    /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6
    /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6
    /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.6/msys
    /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.6
    /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.6/msys
    /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.6
    .