[h-e-w] w32-symlinks for NT Emacs 21

[Dr Francis J. Wright]

The w32-symlinks package is now available from my web site
http://centaur.maths.qmul.ac.uk/Emacs/.  It is an updated version of the
support for Windows symbolic links that is in the version of ls-lisp
available from my web site, which is now obsolete.  The rest of that version
of ls-lisp is essentially what is distributed with Emacs 21.  If you run NT
Emacs 21 and you also run any version of ls-lisp from my web site, then I
suggest you remove that version of ls-lisp, revert to using the standard
preloaded Emacs 21 version, and if you want symbolic link support then run
w32-symlinks.

w32-symlinks is primarily designed to hook into the Emacs 21 version of
ls-lisp and allow dired to follow symbolic links.  Please note that this
facility will work ONLY with the standard Emacs 21 version of ls-lisp and
not with any earlier version.

However, w32-symlinks also provides some support to make the dired S command
(dired-do-symlink) work, which is independent of ls-lisp.  The dired advice
used to follow symlinks also works in some cases if you run Cygwin ls
instead of ls-lisp, and I plan to improve this support later.

By default, w32-symlinks supports standard Microsoft and current Cygwin
shortcut files.  If you want to use obsolete Cygwin symlink files then you
need to customize the user option w32-symlinks appropriately.

This is a preliminary release.  Please email me with any problems or
suggestions.  I will include an option to hide the .lnk extension is a
future version of ls-lisp.  (It requires some care to avoid breaking dired.)

Francis

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Dr Francis J. Wright
School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary
University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
Tel: 020 7882 5453 (direct);  Fax: 020 8981 9587 (dept.)
address@hidden;  http://centaur.maths.qmul.ac.uk/