New-Item Type SymbolicLink on Unix-like platforms unexpectedly converts relative target paths to absolute one

[mklement0]

PR #12797 tried to implement support for relative target paths for symbolic links (symlinks).

• On Windows, this now works properly.

• On Unix-like platforms, a relative input path is still unexpectedly converted to a full path and stored as such in the symlink.

Steps to reproduce

Note: Run on macOS and/or Linux (the test succeeds on Windows).

Push-Location -ea Stop ($tmpDir = (New-Item -Type Directory -Force (Join-Path Temp:/ $PID)).FullName)

# Create a file to serve as the symlink target.
$null = New-Item -Force file

# Determine the native file-system path separator, as well as the one 
# *not* native to the platform.
$sep = [IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar
$otherSep = $sep -eq '/' ? '\' : '/'

# To also test path-separator normalization, we use the non-native separator.
$null = New-Item -Force -Type SymbolicLink fileL -Target ".${otherSep}file"

# The symlink's target should be a relative path that uses the platform-appropriate path separator.
(Get-Item fileL).Target | Should -Be ".${sep}file"

# Clean up.
Pop-Location; Remove-Item $tmpDir -Recurse

Expected behavior

The test should succeed.

Actual behavior

The test fails, because the relative input path is unexpectedly first resolved to a full path before the symlink is defined:

InvalidResult: Expected strings to be the same, but they were different. 
Expected length: 6 Actual length:   14 Strings differ at index 0. 
Expected: './file' But was: '/tmp/2802/file'

Environment data

PowerShell Core 7.2.0-preview.4

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has not had any activity in 6 months, if this is a bug please try to reproduce on the latest version of PowerShell and reopen a new issue and reference this issue if this is still a blocker for you.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has not had any activity in 6 months, if this is a bug please try to reproduce on the latest version of PowerShell and reopen a new issue and reference this issue if this is still a blocker for you.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has not had any activity in 6 months, if this is a bug please try to reproduce on the latest version of PowerShell and reopen a new issue and reference this issue if this is still a blocker for you.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been marked as "No Activity" as there has been no activity for 6 months. It has been closed for housekeeping purposes.