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

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I disagree with the view that the link target is just a string.
> It is meant to be a file name.

Maybe we should look at other, analogous cases, where this also
happens.  Here is an example from my personal experience: Solaris
machines can boot via NFS over the network.  So we have a machine
ourserver with a directory /export/root/aclient which is exported via
NFS and used by aclient as root (/) directory.

Now suppose I want to install the machine.  For this, I create the
/export/root/aclient directory and populate it with files.  Suppose
that there needs to be a symlink /some/symlink pointing to
/other/file on that host.

Then, the following sequence of commands (as root@ourserver!) will do
the trick:

    cd /export/root/aclient/some
    ln -s /other/file symlink

Note that I type "/other/file" when issuing a command on ourserver,
where the file is actually known as /export/root/aclient/other/file!

Thus, I think it makes sense to allow the following command:

(make-symbolic-link "/other/file" "/auser@ahost:/some/symlink")

It is exactly analogous to the above-mentioned NFS case.  The symlink
target would be on the machine ahost.

Have I convinced you?

kai
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