AFAIK, there is nothing about the symlink that is macOS or DropBox specific.

Again, ~/.emacs is a symlink to the file in the subfolder of ~/Dropbox.

The lock file is not a symlink.

Emacs does not create lock files that are symlinks AFAIK.

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 9:09 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> From: Duncan Greatwood <dgreatwood@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 16 May 2024 08:55:17 -0700
> Cc: 70973@debbugs.gnu.org
>
> > I thought "ls -l" will show the target of
> > the symlink, but maybe it doesn't on macOS?
> It does indeed do that, even on macOS
>
> However, it is the .emacs that is a symlink.
>
> $ ls -l ~/.emacs
> lrwxr-xr-x  1 username  staff  59 Dec  6  2015 .emacs ->
> /Users/username/Dropbox/Documents/Projects/emacs/dotemacs
>
> The lock file is not a link.

Is that normal on macOS?  Or is that something specific to DropBox?
If you edit a file elsewhere on your system, does Emacs create lock
files that are symlinks?

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