[BUG?]: unpack-file behavior for blobs corresponding to symlinks

["Elijah Newren" <newren@gmail.com>]

Hi,

unpack-file doesn't create symlinks as I'd expect.  I'm not sure if
this is a bug in unpack-file, or in my expectations.

To reproduce:

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/newren/testing/.git/
$ echo bla > bar
$ ln -s bar foo
$ git add bar foo
$ git ls-files -s foo
120000 ba0e162e1c47469e3fe4b393a8bf8c569f302116 0       foo
$ git unpack-file ba0e162e1c47469e3fe4b393a8bf8c569f302116
.merge_file_J1hTaV
$ ls -l foo .merge_file_J1hTaV
lrwxrwxrwx  1 enewren enewren 3 Sep 19 08:22 foo -> bar
-rw-------  1 enewren enewren 3 Sep 19 08:23 .merge_file_J1hTaV
$ echo $(cat .merge_file_J1hTaV)
bar

Why is .merge_file_J1hTaV a regular file instead of a symlink?  Is
there an alternative command I can use that would create a symlink to
bar given the information I have from the git ls-files command (and
which also works for creating normal files and other special file
types)?

Thanks,
Elijah