Cannot branch a repo on Windows because of reserved file names

[Martin Packman]

On 26/01/2012, Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu.org> wrote:
>   D:\usr\eli\bzr>bzr branch git://git.sv.gnu.org/libunwind.git
>   bzr: ERROR: File exists: u'D:/usr/eli/bzr/libunwind.git/aux': [Error 183]
> Cannot create a file when that file already exists
>
> This happens because "AUX" is a reserved name on MS-Windows (it's a
> character device).
>
> Is there any way around this in bzr?  Should I file a bug report?

This has come up a couple of times, and it looks like we have a report
along these lines, so feel free to +affectsmeto it:

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/566174>

The root issue is similar to the symlink problem, we need a way of
creating a tree even when the filesystem can't represent certain
branch contents. For workarounds, I think running the initial branch
command under cygwin is all I can suggest.

Martin