Cygwin tool to differ junctions from soft links?

matthew patton pattonme@yahoo.com
Fri Nov 17 18:44:18 GMT 2023


>> Cygwin never creates Windows Directory or Filesystem Junction reparse points,
>> and by default it uses its own version of Unix path symlink files, preceded by 
>> a flag ("magic cookie") value, and with system attribute, to allow 
>> compatibility with FAT file system limitations, or else NFS symlinks on NFS 
>> filesystems.
>> CYGWIN env var settings allow creation of Windows shortcuts and symbolic link 
>> reparse points instead of its default (equivalent to winsymlinks:sys), when 
>> supported by the file system and Windows release:
>>     https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-cygwinenv.html
>>     https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#pathnames-symlinks

That ^^^ hasn't been true for how many years now? That was the OLD, deprecated mechanism which hasn't seen the light of day since what, WIndows 7 or 10?
13:36 45 $ unset CYGWIN; /bin/ln -s README.md test-link13:37 46 $ cmd /c dir /a: test-link
 Volume in drive C is Windows
 Directory of C:\Users\pattonma
11/17/2023  01:37 PM    <JUNCTION>     test-link [...]               1 File(s)              0 bytes               0 Dir(s)  241,024,512,000 bytes free
My environment is shared between Win10, Cygwin, and WSL and Dropbox for a bunch of targets of symlinks. Some 'DOS' tools, specifically AWS CLI can't follow Junctions so I had to take matters into my own hands.

  


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