Re: [Mingw-users] Is it possible to show a symlink?

[Eli Z. <el...@gn...>]

> Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:31:45 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mark Mikofski <bwa...@ya...>
> 
> I did some searching and found some conflicting answers to this question. Most sites say that MinGW does not support symlinks, but then there was a patch floating around that did; Was it ever implemented? (Apparently not since it is still open?)

Assuming you are asking about native Windows symlinks, introduced in
Vista:

  . If you are asking whether MinGW has 'symlink' and 'readlink'
    library functions, then no, not AFAIK.

  . If you are asking whether one _can_ write these functions in
    MinGW, then yes, one can.  In fact, Emacs has such implementations
    in its sources (and as result, Emacs supports symlinks on Vista
    and later).

> Regardless, I have created links (by default hard) and evidently they work, although they appear to be exact duplicates of the original. I have tested them by altering the target, and then checking if the link is updated, and lo-and-behold, it is. Doesn't that mean that the files are linked?

Yes, probably.

> The issue is that I can't see links by using `ls -l`, and they certainly don't show up any different in windows explorer. How do I tell if a file is a link made by MSYS `ln`? Or if I'm completely misunderstanding (which is most likely the case) could someone please enlighten me?

Here, you seem to be asking about MSYS, not MinGW.  That's another
issue, IIUC.