Don't create symlinks in bzr.dev, please!

[Adrian Wilkins]

> 
> Actually it would be a bug in Bazaar for not correctly creating the
> windows equivalent of symlinks (though using them sucks on Windows so
> eww).
> 
> We really do need a policy not to use them in bzr.dev (and recommend
> not to use them in any plugins) 

Indeed, this put me off using BugsEverywhere (although I've since 
developed other aversions to in-tree bug tracking), because I couldn't 
get the sources on Windows (without the win32symlinks plugin).

Someone mentioned junction points ; these only link folders, and only on 
the same volume.

NTFS 6 and up support symlinks and hardlinks [1] (Vista and up), but 
you'd have to write support for them into Bazaar or an extra library 
because AFAIK Python doesn't support them via the usual API.

The only other alternative I suppose is to install one of the ext2 
drivers for Windows and make yourself an ext2 filesystem to work in. On 
the other hand, I was unable to find any confirmation that the userland 
code for these supports symlinks either, and I'd be fairly certain that 
again, the Python library is going to see that it's running on Windows 
and assume that symlinks are unsupported.

So maybe the best suggestion was to make a Linux VM.. would you be able 
to share the working tree out via Samba and ignore the symlink issue 
from Windows?

[1]
CreateSymbolicLink function
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363866%28VS.85%29.aspx