Re: [boost] symbolic links while building boost

Subject: Re: [boost] symbolic links while building boost
From: OvermindDL1 (overminddl1_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-12-04 03:58:06

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Vladimir Prus
<vladimir_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Zachary Turner wrote:
>
>> I use Windows primarily, and typically after building boost, there are two
>> copies of each library. Â One with the version extension such as -1_41, and
>> the other without. Â My understanding is that the one without the version
>> number is supposed to be a symlink to the one with the version number on
>> platforms such as linux, but that on Windows it is just a copy of the file
>> due to poor support for symlinks in windows.
>>
>> My question is whether there has been any talk of changing this. Â Windows
>> has supported first class symlinks since Vista, so it would seem possible to
>> have Vista and beyond actually use this functionality and create real
>> symlinks.
>
> Zachary,
>
> there was no talk about this. Somebody previously suggested using hard links on NTFS,
> if available, but that did not lead anywhere.
>
> I think the primary concern is that while the filesystem might support hard or soft links
> now, existing programs do not, and presumably, if somebody's backup -- or another other --
> program chokes on Boost, user will blame us. However, I don't use Windows enough to be
> able to decide. I'm happy to implement whatever the concensus here might be.

I would certainly be up for hard links (I use them heavily already
elsewhere and have never seen an odd issue yet), they work on Win2k
and up at least.  Hard links on windows require NTFS (who isn't...)
and have two file descriptors that point to the same data chunk.
Every program that does not specifically know how to look for hard
links just thinks they are two separate files with no relation.