From: Avery Pennarun Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:18:07 GMT Subject: Re: Windows symlinks Message-ID: <32541b130806241618p69f6167dycb09cdec1af8ba0@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <911589C97062424796D53B625CEC0025E4618F@USCOBRMFA-SE-70.northamerica.cexp.com> On 6/24/08, Patrick.Higgins@cexp.com wrote: > Cygwin's clever symlink trick seems to work pretty well in practice. I'm not exactly sure what > it's doing, but it seems to create a shortcut that it's own programs understand. Some other > non-Cygwin programs seem to understand them, too, but Java does not which is a big > problem for me. It seems somewhat odd that your developers are relying on an operating system feature that doesn't even exist. I might suggest one of: - add an abstraction layer to your Java applet that understands cygwin-style symlinks - actually just check in the file multiple times; git will store it efficiently anyway - improve your Makefile to automatically copy the files and/or create symlinks at build time rather than storing the symlinks in revision control. My understanding of Clearcase is that it actually loads a virtual filesystem driver in Windows and does all kinds of insane magic - slowly and inefficiently, too - behind the scenes. Something tells me git (and every other VCS :)) really doesn't want to go there. Have fun, Avery