[Samba] client-side symlinks ?

[Jeremy Allison]

On Thu, May 04, 2023 at 04:01:49PM +0300, Michael Tokarev via samba wrote:
>04.05.2023 15:32, Ralph Boehme пишет:
>>On 5/4/23 13:57, Michael Tokarev via samba wrote:
>>>Is it possible for windows to actually see and use symlinks on samba server?
>>>Windows NTFS does have notion of junctions and symbolic links, so when one
>>>open file A (which is a symbolic link), windows actually opens file B.
>>>Can such mechanism be used when A is on samba share?
>>
>>currently not, but with the upcoming SMB3 UNIX Extensions this will be possible. It is currently being worked on by Volker. There's no ETA.
>
>It is interesting.  Windows to windows communication allows symlinks,
>client machine does see a symlink as a symlink.

These are what Window calls "reparse points", which may
present as many different objects in a filesystem, symlinks
only being one of them.

The current idea is to support these in Samba on files
only, with the reparse point data being held in a special
EA.

Getting the client to see and work with these is the
hard part :-).