Simon Josefsson wrote:
> > * We should not propagate the use of symbolic links in git repositories,
> > because it causes real practical problems to users on Windows, with
> > very small benefit.
>
> That was my feeling too, but it has worked for a couple of years for me
> with README -> README.md, and people build libidn/libidn2 on Windows
> (there are even Windows CI/CD jobs running).
>
> What exactly are the problems with symlinks for Windows?
When a user checks out such a git repository on Windows, there are problems:
- When using 'git clone' with Cygwin-built git, the symlinks look fine in
the Cygwin world, but are garbage text files ("!<symlink>...") in
Windows text editors (Notepad++ etc.).
- When using 'git clone' with "git for Windows" by Johannes Schindelin,
support for symlinks is chosen at installation time and is off by default.
The symlinks then are plain-text files, e.g. NEWS contains "NEWS.md<LF>".
Tested on Windows 10 with the inetutils repository.
