Symbolic link in Win10
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10 years after Vista (the first version of Windows that supports symbolic link), they're finally doing it right. But for most people (who're not in Windows Insider program) we'll have to wait until build 14972+.
Hopefully this will convert more usage that previously on hardlink that should be symbolic link back to it.
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Now in Windows 10 Creators Update, a user (with admin rights) can first enable Developer Mode, and then any user on the machine can run the mklink command without elevating a command-line console.
How is that any different from adding yourself to "Create symbolic links policy"?
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@dse Home editions does not have group policy, but can enable developer mode with regedit.
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@cheong still it is not out of the box. Next, developers will have to ask their users to enable "Developer Mode" any time something does not work.
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You can use symbolic links freely in Windows 7 too As long as you have UAC disabled (That's kinda like developer mode, right?)
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@dse said in Symbolic link in Win10:
@cheong still it is not out of the box. Next, developers will have to ask their users to enable "Developer Mode" any time something does not work.
Btw, I'm doing that already to allow my home-built UWP application to run on his laptop for demo.
This reminds me of something interesting... my company only have license for VS2013 but my UWP app is built for VS2015. What will be the fate of this project after I quit my company?
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@cheong said in Symbolic link in Win10:
@dse said in Symbolic link in Win10:
@cheong still it is not out of the box. Next, developers will have to ask their users to enable "Developer Mode" any time something does not work.
Btw, I'm doing that already to allow my home-built UWP application to run on his laptop for demo.
This reminds me of something interesting... my company only have license for VS2013 but my UWP app is built for VS2015. What will be the fate of this project after I quit my company?
If they did not use CMake (or better yet meson) to generate the VS solution file, I do not care about their fate! If they are the sort of morons who check the
.sln
file in their repository, they better be out of business.
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@dse said in Symbolic link in Win10:
If they did not use CMake (or better yet meson) to generate the VS solution file, I do not care about their fate! If they are the sort of morons who check the
.sln
file in their repository, they better be out of business.The truth is that, since they don't give me a Win10 machine to build the project, I had to remote desktop and built it in entirely on my own machine at home (I have my own MSDN subscription so no licensing problem here).
Because of this, although I've copied the project source code to company's file server, the project itself is nowhere on any source control system here.
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I have only ever once needed to use symlinks in Windows: having the steamapps directory on a different, bigger hard drive than steam itself.
They've since added that feature to steam normally, but I haven't removed the symlink for fear of breaking everything.
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@Salamander said in Symbolic link in Win10:
fear of breaking everything
Always a good reason, especially when dealing with Steam. Or Windows 10 XD
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@cheong said in Symbolic link in Win10:
This reminds me of something interesting... my company only have license for VS2013 but my UWP app is built for VS2015. What will be the fate of this project after I quit my company?
Should be fine. Since 2012, SLN files are backwards compatible
@dse said in Symbolic link in Win10:
If they did not use CMake (or better yet meson)
SLN is a great solution for .NET projects
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This is a super tiny change. Instead of requiring an elevated console, IF you have dev mode enabled, you can now do it without. Everything else is the same.
Meh. So they are still adamant symlinks are only for the dirty developers, and regular users are left with stupid shortcuts. But if this makes it easier to port stuff to windows, I guess it's good enough.
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@Jaloopa said in Symbolic link in Win10:
@cheong said in Symbolic link in Win10:
This reminds me of something interesting... my company only have license for VS2013 but my UWP app is built for VS2015. What will be the fate of this project after I quit my company?
Should be fine. Since 2012, SLN files are backwards compatible
The solution will open, but not the project: you can only develop UWP apps in VS2015.
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So there's shortcuts, symlinks, hard links, and junctions, hope I'm not forgetting any.
Four different things for what in the end is the same exact fucking concept. Fuck you Microsoft, fix your shit.
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@anonymous234 You know those same four things exist in other OSes too, right? Although Linux calls them 'mount points' instead of 'junctions'.
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@anonymous234 said in Symbolic link in Win10:
So there's shortcuts, symlinks, hard links, and junctions, hope I'm not forgetting any.
What is interesting is that Microsoft claims that only symlinks are a security issue, but refuses to go into detail.
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@RaceProUK I know that Linux is weird and full of random concepts that exist only because that's how computers worked in 1978 or simply because a random programmer felt like doing it that way, but that's the UNIX way and there's no point trying to fight it.
When Windows does it, that's when it bothers me.
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@anonymous234 said in Symbolic link in Win10:
I know that Linux is weird and full of random concepts that exist only because that's how computers worked in 1978
Please tell me which of the following concepts does not make sense in 2016:
- hard links
- symlinks
- mount points
Because I can assure you that all of them are still useful and that you're full of shit.
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@dse said in Symbolic link in Win10:
How is that any different from adding yourself to "Create symbolic links policy"?
Because if you're also an administrator, it requires elevation, which is really dumb because non-admins with the create symbolic links perm don't require elevation. Thus Symlinks are an absolute pain to use for most people.
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@RaceProUK said:
@Jaloopa said in Symbolic link in Win10:
@cheong said in Symbolic link in Win10:
This reminds me of something interesting... my company only have license for VS2013 but my UWP app is built for VS2015. What will be the fate of this project after I quit my company?
Should be fine. Since 2012, SLN files are backwards compatible
The solution will open, but not the project: you can only develop UWP apps in VS2015.
Yup. VS2013 cannot recognize the project type ID in .csproj file.
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@anonymous234 said in Symbolic link in Win10:
So there's shortcuts, symlinks, hard links, and junctions, hope I'm not forgetting any.
Four different things for what in the end is the same exact fucking concept. Fuck you Microsoft, fix your shit.
To make it clearer or to confuse you more here are the list of reparse points supported in NTFS .
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@anonymous234
When Windows does it, it's because a random programmer felt like doing it that way in 1988 and now it's the Compatible™ way. What's different is practicality over religion.