Eryk Sun <eryk...@gmail.com> added the comment:
Where the POSIX specification uses the term "symbolic link" [1], it means one and only one type of symlink, not multiple types of symlink with divergent behavior depending on the context. To be consistent, only one type of Windows reparse point [2] is classified as a POSIX symlink, the one that's designed to behave like a POSIX symlink in the kernel and API: IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK. It's particularly important that given os.path.islink is true, then os.readlink and os.symlink can create an equivalent copy. This is only implemented for IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK. That said, Windows has a variety of filesystem link types, which it calls name-surrogate reparse points. Of this set, in most systems you're only likely to encounter IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK and IO_REPARSE_TAG_MOUNT_POINT. But Microsoft has a growing list of name-surrogate types, including: IO_REPARSE_TAG_IIS_CACHE, IO_REPARSE_TAG_GLOBAL_REPARSE (NPFS named-pipe symlink from server silo into host silo), IO_REPARSE_TAG_WCI_LINK and IO_REPARSE_TAG_WCI_TOMBSTONE (Windows container isolation), IO_REPARSE_TAG_PROJFS_TOMBSTONE (Projected filesystem tombstone, such as in VFS for Git), IO_REPARSE_TAG_LX_SYMLINK (WSL symlink created on a drvfs volume). In some cases these are used transparently behind the scenes (e.g. tombstones that mark deleted files), or there may be no handler for Windows callers (e.g. WSL symlinks are meaningless in Windows). Note that the latter list does not include IO_REPARSE_TAG_APPEXECLINK. Even though "LINK" is in the name, this reparse point type is not any kind of filesystem link in practice since it is not handled by the I/O manager or a filter driver in the kernel. As discussed in my first message, all of the intended behavior of an app-exec link is implemented instead by user-mode API functions such as CreateProcessW. In that respect, an app-exec link is more like a shell link (i.e. a LNK file), which gets handled by ShellExecuteExW. I wouldn't expect the standard library to handle LNK files as symlinks. --- The vast majority of registered reparse-point types are not link types (e.g. cloud files are dehydrated placeholder reparse points). The base Windows API has no special handling for the non-link cases. For example, MoveFileExW opens a non-link reparse point as a regular file. If it operated on the reparse point itself, like it does for a symbolic link, it would ignore the handler and potentially break something. This is why we can't even rename an app-exec link, since there's no handler for the reparse tag: >>> src = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(sys.executable), 'idle3.exe') >>> dst = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(sys.executable), 'spam3.exe') >>> try: os.rename(src, dst) ... except OSError as e: print('winerror:', e.winerror) ... winerror: 1920 --- The standard library is not limited to just IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK links. It supports the broader category of Windows name-surrogate links in certain cases. For example, os.lstat doesn't follow them; os.readlink supports symlinks and mountpoints [*]; os.unlink operates on symlinks and mountpoints; and shutil.rmtree doesn't traverse mountpoints (unlike the POSIX implementation). Caveat emptor regarding os.readlink, however. There are significant differences between symlinks and mountpoints. They're designed to behave like Unix symlinks and bind mountpoints, which have similar behavioral differences. Also, mountpoints are always evaluated on the server, so a remote mountpoint *must* be treated as opaque data [1]: The following reparse tags, with the exception of IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK, are processed on the server and are not processed by a client after transmission over the wire. Clients SHOULD treat associated reparse data as opaque data. --- [1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/xrat/V4_xbd_chap03.html#tag_21_03_00_75 [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-fscc/c8e77b37-3909-4fe6-a4ea-2b9d423b1ee4 ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue41053> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com