I have a folder with a lot of native Windows symbolic links. I want to copy this folder.
I cannot rsync or cp this folder due to Cygwin being unable to create symbolic links without also wanting to verify the link target. This can be demonstrated: $ ln -s a b ln: failed to create symbolic link 'b': No such file or directory If I create a test directory folder_a/ and folder_b/. Inside I will "touch a" and "ln -s a b". I cannot rsync this folder: $ rsync -a folder_a/ folder_b/ rsync: symlink "folder_a/b" -> "a" failed: No such file or directory (2) rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1306) [sender=3.2.0dev] Using "cp -a folder_a/* folder_b/" in this test case DOES work but this is simply because files were returned in the correct order and the link could be created. This can be demonstrated where this works fine: $ cp -a folder_a/a folder_a/b folder_b/ But this does not: $ cp -a folder_a/b folder_a/b folder_b/ cp: cannot create symbolic link 'folder_b/b': No such file or directory cp: warning: source file 'folder_a/b' specified more than once The order in which files are returned while listing them in a directory and necessitating their pre-existence while performing a deep copy is impossible. It's also very normal for symbolic links to exist which may or may not point to a valid target depending on the observing path. Windows does NOT require a link to be valid before creation. This can be demonstrated with mklink: C:\mklink b a symbolic link created for b <<===>> a -- Problem reports: https://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: https://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: https://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: https://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
