Re: Uninitialized submodules as symlinks

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 14, 2016, 16:48 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr37izxkf.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20161013193558.GC1698@ikke.info>

Kevin Daudt <me@ikke.info> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 06:10:17PM +0200, Heiko Voigt wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 06:17:05PM +0000, David Turner wrote:
>> > Presently, uninitialized submodules are materialized in the working
>> > tree as empty directories.  We would like to consider having them be
>> > symlinks.  Specifically, we'd like them to be symlinks into a FUSE
>> > filesystem which retrieves files on demand.
>> 
>> How about portability? This feature would only work on Unix like
>> operating systems. You have to be careful to not break Windows since
>> they do not have symlinks.
>
> NTFS does have symlinks, but you need admin right to create them though
> (unless you change the policy).

That sounds like saying "It has, but it practically is not usable by Git as a mechanism to achieve this goal" to me.