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Date:   Mon, 17 Oct 2016 11:28:38 +0200
From:   Heiko Voigt <hvoigt@hvoigt.net>
To:     Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc:     Kevin Daudt <me@ikke.info>,
        David Turner <David.Turner@twosigma.com>,
        "git@vger.kernel.org" <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Uninitialized submodules as symlinks
Message-ID: <20161017092838.GC43997@book.hvoigt.net>
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On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 09:48:16AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Kevin Daudt <me@ikke.info> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 06:10:17PM +0200, Heiko Voigt wrote:
> >> On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 06:17:05PM +0000, David Turner wrote:
> >> > Presently, uninitialized submodules are materialized in the working
> >> > tree as empty directories.  We would like to consider having them be
> >> > symlinks.  Specifically, we'd like them to be symlinks into a FUSE
> >> > filesystem which retrieves files on demand.
> >> 
> >> How about portability? This feature would only work on Unix like
> >> operating systems. You have to be careful to not break Windows since
> >> they do not have symlinks.
> >
> > NTFS does have symlinks, but you need admin right to create them though
> > (unless you change the policy).
> 
> That sounds like saying "It has, but it practically is not usable by
> Git as a mechanism to achieve this goal" to me.

Yes and that is why Git for Windows does not use them and I simplified
to: "Windows does not have symlinks". For a normal user there is no such
thing as symlinks on Windows, unfortunately.

Cheers Heiko