A feature Unix/Linux users have enjoyed for quite some time will make its way into Windows Vista when it ships next year. Ward Ralston, the developer who wrote the code explains on the TechNet blog about this new feature and how it differs from a shortcut.
"In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new filesystem object (examples of existing filesystem objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link). So then you ask how is that different from a short-cut (the .lnk file)? Well, a shortcut will only work when used from within the Windows shell, it is a construct of the shell, and other apps don’t understand short-cuts. To other apps, short-cuts look just like a file. With symbolic links, this concept is taken and is implemented within the file system. Apps when they open a symbolic link will now open the target by default (i.e. what the link points to), unless they explicitly ask for the symbolic link itself to be opened. Note symbolic links are an NTFS feature."
View: General information on Symbolic Links (Unix based)
News source: Windows Server Division Weblog
"In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new filesystem object (examples of existing filesystem objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link). So then you ask how is that different from a short-cut (the .lnk file)? Well, a shortcut will only work when used from within the Windows shell, it is a construct of the shell, and other apps don’t understand short-cuts. To other apps, short-cuts look just like a file. With symbolic links, this concept is taken and is implemented within the file system. Apps when they open a symbolic link will now open the target by default (i.e. what the link points to), unless they explicitly ask for the symbolic link itself to be opened. Note symbolic links are an NTFS feature."
View: General information on Symbolic Links (Unix based) News source: Windows Server Division Weblog
When contacted for input on the issue, a Mozilla spokesperson said that with 35 languages across 3 supported platforms (Windows, Linux, and Mac) the list of bugs suspected and reported via the Bugzilla reporting and tracking tool can sometimes be massive. The spokesperson went on to state that while the Bugzilla lists can often be overwhelming, a significant number of submitted reports often times just don’t contain enough information to be of assistance when it comes to tracking down a particular problem. As I witnessed myself, there are pages of comments on this bug alone, and many of them contain no technical information to assist the developers, but merely contain frustrated comments such as “this was broke back in version x.xx and it’s still broken, when will it be fixed.” While it is understandable that posts like that are submitted by users who are at the time, frustrated with the situation, it is also true that they provide no value whatsoever to the bug tracking process. The Mozilla spokesperson also stated that of those issues reported, first priority has and will always be security issues, and then issues that are more widespread and have the potential to disrupt the usefulness of the product to the most users, which is understandable.
In the end, this bug has existed for quite some time, and Mozilla is aware of it. However it only rears its ugly head twice a year, at the change to and from Daylight Savings Time, and coupled with the fact that not everyone observes Daylight Savings Time, it just doesn’t get enough attention from the end user to warrant investing a lot of time and resources in to fixing, at least not in the current release of the software. The Mozilla spokesperson did say that v1.5 is due out in this quarter, which is rapidly drawing to a close, and that Release Candidate 1 would be released very soon. With so many changes in this new version including some significant security enhancements such as anti-phising protection, the spokesperson said that it is possible that this issue may become a non-issue once v1.5 is released. Will it be fixed in v1.5? We’ll keep you posted.
View: Bug 136049 @ Bugzilla
Because I can think of a few places where this would be useful.
Only Directory level Symbolic links are supported through hardlinks.
File level symbolic links are new in Vista.
You can simulate file level symbolic links through shortcuts in pre-Vista although its not as transparent to apps as you want it to be.
Part of the confusion here is that NTFS also has "reparse points" or "junction points" which are not exactly the same thing. Reparse/junction points are directory-level only.
Check out the utils at http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/ntutils.html
http://ftp.novell.com/pub/forge/ntfslink/n...er/ntfslink.exe
1. Install and reboot.
2. Use the Right click drag to make a hardlink or junction.
Last edited by 2016 on 05 Nov 2005 - 09:45
"Will Windows XP support symbolic links?"
It is an NTFS feature after all...and we've seen some things made with Vista in mind, being available for XP...
I'm also suprised there hasn't been a post from a *nix user saying welcome to 1980 yet.
I have to agree with the first replay that I see no way MS would back port NTFS 6.0 to XP. Why would they?
If you don't know what hard links are, read here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil_hardlink.mspx
If you have a symbolic link for a file, and delete the original, the symbolic link will no longer work. That's because symlinks just "point" to the file they're linking to.
That also explains why hard links can't be used across partitions/harddrives, while symlinks can.
Last edited by 37017 on 03 Nov 2005 - 21:09
1) he is better than every1 else
2) Everyone else does not deserve to read about it now.
Way to be an << removed >>.
As I asked earlier, why did this hit the front page now and not several months ago?
Now, << removed >> Guru, nobody asked for your << removed >> opinion
Last edited by 36818 on 03 Nov 2005 - 20:57
It should have always been like that.
1) Going away from the monolithic concept of the kernel
2) Don't let the main user be PowerUser / Root /Admin ...
3) The new shell that want to be the same as Bash (but it's far to be as intuitive as Bash!)
4) The story og symbolic links
... where will it stops!
PS: for me this isn't a revolution nor a evolution .. it's simply coping Linux/Unix/BSD best feature and put them in Windows ... oh .. don't think it's bad ... but plz stop to TRY TO MAKE A COPY and make a Linux distro of you own .. this would rockz ! (don't forget DX support
Wow, so they add some features that Linux already has, big whoop. They're still adding plenty of features Linux doesn't have.
MS marketing Department isn't as **** as you
Because Linux is a UNIX clone and OSX is based on BSD, a UNIX deriviative.
IIRC.
IIRC.
Right, so every UNIX deriviative has the right to use this feature, regardless of how different they are from UNIX or whether or not they helped in any way to create the feature, but if MS uses it, oh no!
Holy double-standard batman!
No, I think it's you that's a bit confused. Windows has a monolithic kernel. So does Linux and OSX and Solaris and FreeBSD and AIX and... need I continue. The only resonably successful OS with a microkernel is QNX and other embedded systems. Virtually every OS has borrowed concepts from the microkernel (like loadable modules, aka drivers), but very few are actually microkernels. This is probably because of the overhead involved in IO and other typically kernel level operations (a microkernel's modules run at a lower privilage than the kernel itself).
I didn't say it's bad that microsoft copy Unix ... oh no .. i would be nice to have a System that runs like Linux ... simple (i meen doing everything with a simple command -> shell), fast, an stable (your UI crashed, crtl-alt-backspace!) .... but with the simplionies that Windows users have like Installing a software, playing games ! ... so, plz Microsoft ,pimp my Windows with Unix stuff !!!!!!!!!
But I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.
be nice to see it included in the os though
EDIT: nm. "file"
Last edited by 47648 on 03 Nov 2005 - 21:44
Call me stupid, but isn't OS X's aliases the same as symbolic links?
Last edited by 108898 on 04 Nov 2005 - 09:09
Also, I remember reading rumors that MS will drop the drive letters, is this still planned? Anyone know?
It unifies the filesystem by placing your 'drive letters' under the /fs/ directory. So, you have /fs/C/filename.ext as the path for a file that exists in the root of your "C:" drive.
Symlinks are so freaken useful it is ridiculous.
For example...say your primary hard drive is full, and you have a large program in..say "c:program filesmicrosoft office"
You could move the entire folder to another drive (d:program filesmicrosoft office) and then make a symlink to it in c:program files so to every dependency of files in that folder can still find what they are looking for.
Excellent.
But with this feature, could I presumably install a really big game (lets say UT2007), Then move like half of the textures to a seperate hard drive (or several), place one of these fancy shortcuts in their original location that points to the new one and get a boost with loading times?
I know it's similar to a RAID set up, but would it still work almost the same?
If you would have (hypothetically) C
and you move that folder to another drive and make a link to E:UT2007Textures.
Would the folder E:UT2007TexturesFolder1 work if the game/application looks for C
For example, you could have a site like say /home/webserver/wwwroot1.2/ containing all the content and code files of the 1.2 version of your e-commerce site. You could configure the server to have as the root seen as /home/webserver/www/ by the server configuration and point a symbolic link called www under /home/webserver to the wwwroot1.2 directory.
Now say that your QA releases a version 1.3 of the website and you want to have a quick switch over with minimum downtime. All you would have to do do is is install the 1.3 version in a new directory called wwwroot1.3 and then point the symbolic link www over to this new directory to launch the new version of the site.
Cool eh?
But we all know (cough) that you meant at least they're not "pig-headed" in the recognition and adoption of useful ideas which didn't originate in Redmond, no?
Edit: changed a word.
Last edited by 37017 on 04 Nov 2005 - 08:46
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