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[Daydream]

I use a lot of symlinks on Win7. Not hardlinks, not junction points. Symlinks - meaning they work for both folders and files.

Now if the import point for some content is a folder that is 'symlinked', MC will present the 'resolved' path not the one where I pointed it to. It gets messy - I know at a glance that everything is fine if I see certain entries to be scanned, but if I see other things it's not so clear.

Can the symlink folder be shown in AutoImport lists, Filename field in the views, etc. and not the physical location it points to?

[ThoBar]

Me, I stick to junctions - they work nicely for most apps...

Doesn't help I know, sorry. 

[gvanbrunt]

Have to agree junctions work just fine for me. Never tried symlinks with MC, but have pulled my hair out using them for other things. Any chance you come from a Linux background?

Still you might want to consider changing some of them to Junction Points which do work. On the other hand, if you do get symlinks working, let me know how...

[Daydream]

I don't see the usable aspect for junction points. They are dangerous (at least on XP; doing things with the junction point may/will affect the target content), cannot be created for files, only for folders, cannot be created across volumes, etc. No, I'm an all Windows user, don't know if this holds true for anything but NTFS.

Symlinks on the other hand, from Vista and up, are very easy. Can be created to files and folders, can be created across volumes, across network, can be deleted without affecting the target content and so on. I use Link Shell Extension to deal with them (which actually handles Hardlinks, Junctions, Volume Mountpoints and Vista/Win7 Symbolic Links).

My main problems is that I'm gettin' the real, zillion characters long paths instead of the symlinks ones in MC. No idea if this is MC-related, Windows-related, etc.

[gvanbrunt]

Junction points can span volumes, just not remote ones, otherwise you are correct, they would be pretty useless. I confess I use them mainly because I'm used used them. Never had SymLinks before, so I haven't used them much, but when I did I ran into problems. I agree that junction points can be very dangerous if you mistakenly delete the folder...

As for the Linux question, I don't see many users that even know about any kinds of links other than system administrators. In the nix world, symlinks are common.

So to expand my knowledge I decided to give the symlinks one more whirl. And it worked without any issues. In fact I did an import of a folder "above" a symlinked folder in MC and everything looked as if it were a normal folder. This is on a Win 7 computer, but I don't see why that would be different than Vista.

Perhaps this is specific to your setup? If you can give me some more details, and perhaps a screenshot I might have a better time duplicating it...

[Daydream]

For example purposes (real scenario is more complex): C:\!INDEX! is a real folder. The !Audiostation subfolder in it is a symlink. When I Okay-ed that, next windows shows how it's actually presented and will be used in the future (totally different path). MC 14, MC15, Win7.

In any other piece of software, from Windows Explorer to Total Commander, they stay consistent, within the symlink path, not jumping back to the original location since that would defy the purpose of a symlink, which obviously is not a shortcut.

[gvanbrunt]

You are correct. I tried the exact same thing and the dialog did convert the path to the actual target. In any test I had done before I had import pointing to a directory above the symlink. That works find. I think this is a bug in MC.