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

[Mark M. <bwa...@ya...>]

> From: Eli Zaretskii <el...@gn...>

> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:24 AM
> Subject: Re: [Mingw-users] Is it possible to show a symlink?
> 
>>  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.


Yes my bad! (Ugh!) I meant NSYS (/bin/ln.exe), not MinGW, sorry!