#2417 7z won't handle both `-i@file.lst` and -snl options correctly

[Paul Semel]

Basically, I'd want to be able to list some directories in file.lst that are symlink, but as the -snl option suggests it, I want the link to be added to the archive and not the whole directory content.

zip does it the right way, because it makes a distinction between path/to/dir and path/to/dir/*.

Note that this is also true for files, as 7z will try to add the actual file to the archive instead of just the link.

I guess for files it'd be easy to fix this, but for directories it would be harder, since 7z accepts both formats mentioned above to target "the directory and its content".

[Igor Pavlov]

why file.lst?
you can write names in command without file list.
Show simplest and smallest command that doesn't work as you expect.

[Paul Semel]

Context:

$ ls
file.lst test_dir

$ ls -l test_dir
Oct 25 16:20 file -> /tmp/test

$ cat file.lst
test_dir/file

The command is: 7z a -snl -i@file.lst test.zip

I expect 7zip to create a zip archive with only one file which is a symlink (because I set -snl). What it contains is an archive with one file, which is named file, which contains the content of /tmp/test. So it is not a symlink, which is what I would have expected.

[Igor Pavlov]

What version of 7-zip?

[Paul Semel]

7-Zip (a) [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=C,Utf16=off,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,128 CPUs AMD EPYC 7B12 (830F10),ASM,AES-NI)

[Igor Pavlov]

-snl switch to store symbolic links as links (WIM and TAR formats only).

[Paul Semel]

Interesting. A few remarks:
1. From the linux command line we can read "-snl : store symbolic links as links". Same thing for the man page.
2. Running 7za a -snl -tzip test.zip test_dir/ will store test_dir/file as a symbolic link, so as I expect it to do.

Am I misunderstanding something here?

[Igor Pavlov]

I don't update old version16.02.
You can use 7-Zip ver 23.01 instead from www.7-zip.org

[Paul Semel]

Indeed, both options actually seem to work on newer versions of 7zip, my bad...

Thanks a lot for helping!