Project includes do not handle soft symlinks on linux, instead copy entire linked directory

[levihb]

If I have something like the following in my project file:

<None Include="fixtures\**" CopyToOutputDirectory="PreserveNewest" LinkBase="fixtures\" />

And then inside of fixtures I have a symlinked folder I created using ln -s [source] [link]. But the problem is when I build the project dotnet removes the symlink and instead just copies everything over. This doesn't work as when running in debug I need the folder to be elsewhere on the system, both because of access and because it's very large.

Is there a workaround for this?

I put linux in the title, although I have not tested it on any other operating system.

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[rainersigwald]

No, it doesn't look like Copy has a CopySymlinksAsSymlinks option. That would be difficult to implement, as the inputs to Copy are a list of files, which are discovered by the ** pattern you're specifying, so we don't even have an entry for your symlink--we just thought of it as a directory to traverse.

I think your best bet is to exclude the symlink directory from the pattern and explicitly set up the symlink using <Exec Command="ln -s ..." /> in a custom target.

[levihb]

@rainersigwald Thanks for the response, sorry I didn't get back to it quick enough in the original issue. I appreciate the workaround, but this still seems like the wrong way to handle things to me?

Surely there shouldn't need to even be a CopySymlinksAsSymlinks, shouldn't it just be the default behaviour to copy a symlink as a symlink, as happens everywhere else? E.g:

As you can see cp will copy the link as a link. msbuild should do the same. In fact it shouldn't even be getting it as a directory, it should be getting it as a file:

As you can see above, in linux hard links should be treated as files unless you explicitly treat them as a directory by adding / to the end. ls was treating the link as a normal file, even with ls fixtures/** it was treating it as just a file in that directory.

I feel as if the msbuild implementation is going completely against the other standards here. It should treat a link as a file unless otherwise specified.