Re: Re: Re: Link support on Windows

[Gustavo Guerra <gm...@acm.org>]

I would happy just with junctions for starters, as they are much more 
common, and most software works with them ok thinking they are directories, 
never had a problem and I use junctions a lot (the first program that 
complaing working on a junction instead of a regular directory was 
tortoisesvn)

Currently subversion supports symlinks in unix, ignoring them when checking 
out on windows.
This could be changed to "if on windows, if there's a symlink in the 
repository pointing to a directory, and the volume is NTFS, then make the 
junction" and "if on unix, if ther's a junction in the repository, create a 
symlink"

Regards
Gustavo Guerra

"Monks, Peter" <pe...@vignette.com> wrote in message 
news:97E6A5FB31F59B4D96F48A4FBC17C286AF86CF@hqexchange6.vignette.com...
G'day Gustavo,

The problem with junctions is that they only support directories.
However, after a bit more hunting I discovered that NTFS also
provides a thing called a "hard link", which (as the name suggests)
is a hard link to a file (and only a file - you can't "hard link"
directories).

Here's a page that described the situation in more detail:

    http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=284

I totally agree that adding support in the SVN client for junctions /
hard links on Windows (as an "emulation" of symlinks) would be really
valuable, but I suspect it would introduce a number of problems too:

1. junctions and hard links only work on NTFS 5+ filesystems (so only
   on Windows 2000+, and only on disks which are using the NTFS
   filesystem, which excludes most removable disks for example)

2. as noted in the article, most Windows software (including the
   Windows Explorer) doesn't support junctions or hard links very well
   at all.  I've personally run into trouble with junctions in the
   past and can confirm that the default Windows Explorer behaviour is
   quite confusing, not to mention dangerous.

3. (development issue) does APR provide access to the necessary APIs
   on Win32 platforms?

I can't help wishing that Windoze^D^Dws supported symlinks properly...

Cheers,
Peter

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Monks                             http://www.sydneyclimbing.com/
pmonks@sydneyclimbing.com      http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/4455/
----------------------------------------------------------------------


> -----Original Message-----
> From: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Gustavo Guerra
> Sent: Sunday, 22 August 2004 8:24am
> To: users@subversion.tigris.org
> Subject: Re: Re: Link support on Windows
>
>
> Looking at
> http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.1_releasenotes.html i see that
> "On win32 systems, the client does no translation"
>
> Couldn't junction support be added? It would be a welcome addition.
>
> Regards
> Gustavo Guerra
>
> "Monks, Peter" <pe...@vignette.com> wrote in message
> news:97E6A5FB31F59B4D96F48A4FBC17C286AF8672@hqexchange6.vignet
> te.com...
> G'day Gustavo,
>
> I think that's because symlinks are only supported on Subversion 1.1
> and TortoiseSVN hasn't been updated to use that version (which makes
> sense given that the 1.1 final hasn't even been released yet).  If
> past history is anything to go by, a matching version of TortoiseSVN
> should be out within a fortnight or so of the official 1.1 release.
> Note that I'm in no way associated with either the Subversion or
> TortoiseSVN development teams, so I could be completely off track.
>
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Monks                             http://www.sydneyclimbing.com/
> pmonks@sydneyclimbing.com      http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/4455/
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Gustavo Guerra
> > Sent: Tuesday, 17 August 2004 2:21pm
> > To: users@subversion.tigris.org
> > Subject: Re: Link support on Windows
> >
> >
> > Maybe I'll explain better what I want
> >
> > I have folder c:\A under subversion /A
> > Then I have c:\inetpub\wwwroot\B under /A/B
> > Then I have a junction from C:\A\B pointing to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\B
> > If I'm in explorer in C:\A\B and try to do something with
> > TortoiseSVN, I get
> > error message "Symbolic links are not supported on this
> > platform", I have to
> > go trough the real path c:\inetpub\wwwroot\B. That's really anoying.
> >
> > Regards
> > Gustavo Guerra
> >
> > "Gustavo Guerra" <gm...@acm.org> wrote in message
> > news:cftqui$t30$1@sea.gmane.org...
> > >I just discovered in by a TortoiseSVN error message that
> > Subversion doesn't
> > >support symbolic links on windows. (I'm using Subversion
> 1.1 RC2 and
> > >TortoiseSVN 1.1 RC1).
> > >
> > > Is this feature planned for future? How long till that?
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > Gustavo Guerra
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
>
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