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RE: Why do symlinks need to be system files


That does make sense. I've played around with using ln -s to create my own
symlinks. The odd thing is that these are all being created as shortcuts vs
this other method. Now that I'm in the "I'm just curious" mode - Does anyone
know why  the two different methods are used?

-Mark
 

-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com [mailto:cygwin-owner@cygwin.com] On Behalf Of
Gary R. Van Sickle
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 1:37 AM
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: RE: Why do symlinks need to be system files

> Mark R. wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've been busy attempting to use WinInstaller LE to create an MSI 
> > package of cygwin so we can automatically deploy a customized build 
> > for our department. This works for the most part, however when I 
> > deploy this to a windows XP machine, all of the symlinks are broken. 
> > Ex/ vi doesn't work, however vim does.
> >
> > When I tracked down the problem, it appears that symlinks require 
> > the "system file" attribute to be set. Does anyone know why this is?
>
> Because that's part of how Cygwin recognizes them as symlinks.

To expand on that a bit, it's so Cygwin doesn't have to open and parse the
actual contents of every file it sees on a path to see if it's a symlink; it
only has to check those marked as system.  Since it's rare to find many
files marked system normally, this results in mega-savings speedwise.

Now if Microsoft would only get hip to this whole symlink thing....

--
Gary R. Van Sickle
Brewer.  Patriot.


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