os: Windows Symlink support

[gopherbot]

by raul.san@sent.com:

It is supposed that every function in package os is platform-independentand and work in
every system, but os.Symlink has not been implemented in Windows.

Symbolic Links
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365680.aspx

Related to: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/fSjM8aga_6Y

[bradfitz]

Comment 1:

Maybe. Symlinks aren't very common at least on Windows, and I imagine most Windows tools
would be confused by them.
I think returning an error on Windows is an acceptable implementation. But leaving open
here for tracking.

Labels changed: added priority-later, os-windows, removed priority-triage.

Status changed to Accepted.

[bradfitz]

Comment 2:

Maybe. Symlinks aren't very common at least on Windows, and I imagine most Windows tools
would be confused by them.
I think returning an error on Windows is an acceptable implementation. But leaving open
here for tracking.

[gopherbot]

Comment 3 by raul.san@sent.com:

"Symlinks aren't very common at least on Windows, and I imagine most Windows tools would
be confused by them."
When you built a cross-system application, you expect that it works in every system; and
since Windows enables symlinks I don't see a real issue to add its usage from Go.

[rsc]

Comment 4:

Labels changed: added go1.3maybe.

[rsc]

Comment 5:

Labels changed: added release-none, removed go1.3maybe.

[rsc]

Comment 6:

Labels changed: added repo-main.

[bradfitz]

Comment 7:

https://golang.org/cl/86160044/ doesn't reference this issue, but should.

[bradfitz]

Comment 8:

Labels changed: added release-go1.4, removed release-none.

[bradleypeabody]

Comment 9:

fwiw: https://gist.github.com/bradleypeabody/10572010
I personally feel that the Windows symlink functionality is lame and it is not
surprising that nobody wants to mess with this feature (the fact that symlink creation
requires administrator privileges by default is especially annoying).  However, the
above does seem work (bar possibly some edge cases I'm not aware of) and could be used
as the basis for an implementation.

[minux]

Comment 10:

Issue #7878 has been merged into this issue.

[gopherbot]

Comment 11 by Ivan.Volosyuk:

Closed as duplicate issue #7878 is about hard links. I have a patch to fix this.
May be hardlinks are not common in both windows and linux, but they are implemented for
go/linux and it makes harder to port linux code to windows if there is inconsistent
implementation.

Attachments:

1. fix.patch (1531 bytes)

[ianlancetaylor]

Comment 12:

Note that patches in bug reports will be lost.  Please see
http://golang.org/doc/contribute.html.  Thanks.

[gopherbot]

Comment 13:

CL https://golang.org/cl/86160044 mentions this issue.

[alexbrainman]

Comment 14:

This issue was closed by revision cf521ce.

Status changed to Fixed.