Re: Tramp: how to handle make-symbolic-link?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    > Assuming that symlinks in the remote file system can only point to
    > that same remote file system, the former request is possible, and the
    > latter should get an error because there is no way to make a link to
    > the local machine's disk.

    make-symbolic-link should not prevent you from creating to a link
    to a file that doesn't exist.  Especially since you can pretty much
    never tell whether the file will ever exist or not.

I agree, but that is not the issue here.  Either way, it will be
possible to make links to files that don't exist.  The issue is about
links that would appear to point to another machine.  Symbolic links
are interpreted by the OS, and it does not understand Emacs remote
file names.  So a link can only point to a file on the same machine.

In Emacs, that link target is a remote file name.  It always points
to a remote file.

It seems that the consistent scheme is that you specify the link target
using a remote file on the same remote machine, and the mechanism
to create the link deletes the remote prefix before really creating
the link.

That's the consistent thing for absolute link targets.  A relative
link target is another matter.  Since that is relative to the
directory which contains the link, it should not contain a remote
prefix, and you would not try to remove any remote prefix.