GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 581830
Should ask user whether to follow symlinks on copy
Last modified: 2021-06-18 15:48:53 UTC
I have nautilus with 2 tabs: one in a folder on my pc and the other on a mounted ftp folder. I have a file referenced by a symlink, and I'm trying to copy it to the ftp folder, but nautilus gives error: "Symbolic links not supported by backend". I think the correct behaviour would be to realize the file to copy is a symlink and copy the referenced file.
After chatting with Alexl on IRC about this we came to the conclusion that probably, as we don't want to always follow symlinks by default, the best solution is to have a dialog like the one for merging directories, which asks the user what to do. This because there are some use cases where you don't want the symlinked file to be copied (imagine a directory tree which contains a symlink to /usr somewhere, we don't want to copy the whole /usr on copy).
*** Bug 623580 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 308437 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 668961 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Also see bug 652948 and its duplicate bug 675944, which ask about adapting relative symlinks on copy (git-annex use case).
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