3 ms·

The higher level thing to notice is that Windows is a second class platform for much of the software world. As such, it is in a position where it needs to bend

The higher level thing to notice is that Windows is a second class platform for much of the software world. As such, it is in a position where it needs to bend the knee for compatibility with the dominant platform if they want it to be an active player in the larger ecosystem. In the case of symlinks, the hard part is already done, to the point where it is a toggle that has already been implemented, the UX of enabling it is just bad.

pjmlp 4y ago
For game developers and GUI applications it is first class. Apparently being the best in symlinks hasn't made a difference in the Year of Desktop Linux.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Both soft links and hard links, as well as directory junctions, have been possible in Windows since Windows XP (though soft links have only been available since the release of Windows Vista 18 years ago). In fact, hard links are essential parts of Microsoft's solution to the DLL hell problem without wasting gigabytes of space. The problem people are running into is that the OS hasn't been designed with wild symlinks in mind and therefore can't guarantee its security principles if any user is able to symlink however they please; if I read the context [1] correctly, it seems like an elevation of privilege is suspected to be very easy to gain if a standard-level user is allowed to place arbitrary soft links on a file system. I see little reason for Microsoft to enable the "all users can soft link" setting by default. They'd need to audit their OS and userland code to determine where soft links may introduce vulnerabilities in order to change the default and a few developers that absolutely insist on using soft links inside git repos for some obscure reason isn't going to get them to make such an effort. Microsoft has made enabling the feature a bit easy [2] but I can find very little about the security analysis done for this change, so enabling dev mode might open your computer up to a whole class of vulnerabilities. I personally don't see a reason to use symlinks in a dev environment, but I suppose *nix developers think otherwise, probably to duplicate files across a source repository for some reason? If your intent is to work together cross platform then there are loads of restrictions you need to deal with. Linux applications tend to trip up over CRLF, every file system has their own stupid restrictions, build tools and shell scripts need to somehow become platform agnostic, you name it. You can blame Windows for being different but the truth is that Windows is still the most commonly used desktop operating system in the world by a huge margin. macOS and Linux are the odd ones out and there is no good reason why the POSIX/X11 system design is better or worse than Cacoa or Win32; it's a mere difference of convention. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/security-policy-settings/create-symbolic-links https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pro... [2]: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin...
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Even earlier, the Technet tools for it were introduced in Windows 2000.

pjmlp 4y ago

For game developers and GUI applications it is first class. Apparently being the best in symlinks hasn't made a difference in the Year of Desktop Linux.

jeroenhd 4y ago

Both soft links and hard links, as well as directory junctions, have been possible in Windows since Windows XP (though soft links have only been available since the release of Windows Vista 18 years ago). In fact, hard links are essential parts of Microsoft's solution to the DLL hell problem without wasting gigabytes of space. The problem people are running into is that the OS hasn't been designed with wild symlinks in mind and therefore can't guarantee its security principles if any user is able to symlink however they please; if I read the context [1] correctly, it seems like an elevation of privilege is suspected to be very easy to gain if a standard-level user is allowed to place arbitrary soft links on a file system. I see little reason for Microsoft to enable the "all users can soft link" setting by default. They'd need to audit their OS and userland code to determine where soft links may introduce vulnerabilities in order to change the default and a few developers that absolutely insist on using soft links inside git repos for some obscure reason isn't going to get them to make such an effort. Microsoft has made enabling the feature a bit easy [2] but I can find very little about the security analysis done for this change, so enabling dev mode might open your computer up to a whole class of vulnerabilities. I personally don't see a reason to use symlinks in a dev environment, but I suppose *nix developers think otherwise, probably to duplicate files across a source repository for some reason? If your intent is to work together cross platform then there are loads of restrictions you need to deal with. Linux applications tend to trip up over CRLF, every file system has their own stupid restrictions, build tools and shell scripts need to somehow become platform agnostic, you name it. You can blame Windows for being different but the truth is that Windows is still the most commonly used desktop operating system in the world by a huge margin. macOS and Linux are the odd ones out and there is no good reason why the POSIX/X11 system design is better or worse than Cacoa or Win32; it's a mere difference of convention. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/security-policy-settings/create-symbolic-links https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pro... [2]: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin...

pjmlp 4y ago
Even earlier, the Technet tools for it were introduced in Windows 2000.