Re: [Mingw-users] Re: MSYS ln -s to directory

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Keith,

* Keith MARSHALL wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 10:54:44AM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote, quoting Stepan Kasal:
> >> 1) It was said here that MSYS supports file hard links on NT
> >> filesystems.  So it is possible that under some circumstances,
> >> LN=ln will be selected there.  Is this intentional?
> >
> > Yes, I think this is intentional.
> 
> If so, doesn't it expose this potential failure mode, observed with
> MSYS `ln' on Win2K-NTFS?
> 
>   $ mkdir foo
> 
>   $ ln foo bar
>   ln: `foo': hard link not allowed for directory

I believe you will have trouble finding a unixy system younger than a
decade that allows hard links _from_ directories; they were a nice way
to seriously screw a file system once (so I have been told).  So no,
nobody going for portability should expect that to work.

Did you maybe mean that
  mkdir foo
  touch bar
  ln bar foo
also would not work (untested)?

Cheers,
Ralf