Git doesn't like symlinks?

[Rogan Dawes <lists@dawes.za.net>]

Hi folks,

I have been tasked with doing some development against an external SVN 
repo, and keeping it largely in sync with an internal directory.

Seeing as how this is a git list, I obviously decided to do this using 
git :-)

So, I have a local git repo with my local changes from the SVN repo, and 
I can push them to the SVN repo without too many problems. The problem 
arises when I try to sync with the local directory.

Since the local directory's structure doesn't match the repo exactly, I 
figured I could work around that by using a symlink to get to the right 
place.

ie. the local dir is
C:\local\blah\release\5.2\<contents>

and the structure of the SVN (and hence git) repo is:
/top/main/<contents>

where <contents> is/should be identical between the two places.

Obviously, git won't work correctly in the local dir, so I tried the 
following (on Cygwin)

$ cd /tmp
$ ~/git/contrib/workdir/git-new-workdir /my/git/repo/ repo-local
$ cd repo-local/top
$ rm -rf main/
$ ln -s /c/local/blah/release/5.2/ main/
$ git status

This worked, and showed me that there were a few files out of sync.

I decided to copy over one of the files from git to the local dir:

$ git checkout top/main/some/file

And git deleted my "main" symlink, and replaced it with a real dir, 
containing "some/file".

Everything _else_ was now "missing".

Any ideas on how I can get this to work? I know this is not strictly 
what git was designed for, but it could do a really good job if it would 
only leave my symlink alone.

Rogan