[Python-ideas] Draft PEP for virtualenv in the stdlib

[Paul Moore]

On 25 October 2011 06:16, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Vinay Sajip wrote:
>
>> Windows XP does not support true symlinks,
>> but only "junctions" aka "reparse points".
>
> Out of curiosity, how far do these fall short of being
> true symlinks? The points I'm aware of are:
>
> * They only work within a volume
> * The GUI doesn't know about them, so it's easy to mistake
>  a link to a folder for an independent copy of it and
>  accidentally trash the original
>
> Are there any others?

They are very uncommon on Windows in general, so people find them
confusing when they encounter them (for example, as a consequence of
the GUI issue mentioned above - I know that's happened to me).

Is there any reason that hard links can't be used on Windows? (Still
not cross-volume, still relatively rarely used, but a bit better known
than symlinks).

BTW, regardless of whether symlinks, hardlinks or copies end up being
used, I'm +1 on the general proposal.

Paul.