RFC: handling of symlinks in the UI

Robert Collins robertc at robertcollins.net
Wed Jul 30 22:38:26 BST 2008


Currently we have a cluster of bgs related to symlink following. E.g.
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/183831
Which is that 'bzr add symlink' fails. It fails because we follow the
symlink quite early.
and
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/124859
Which is that 'bzr log symlink' neither logs the branch containing the
link, nor follows the link to log the branch the link pointed at.

I'd like to try and figure out a good consistent answer, or at least a
set of rules so that we can fix these.

We could:
 - not follow symlinks ever.
   - simple rule to document
   - means symlinks can't be used to manage a collection of branches
 - follow links differently per command
   - more complex documentation
   - doesn't address the second bug above at all
 - provide some UI convention to control whether we follow links
   - e.g. an option, or "dontfollow" vs "follow/" (which is what 'rm' 
     appears to use).
   - needs documentation too
 

Thoughts?
-Rob

-- 
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