Support symbolic link

[eungjun-yi]

Sometimes I move document file to another directory in my repository. Unfortunately it breaks the link(url) to the old location. My friends who click the old link I gave before moving the file will see 404 Not Found error.

It would be nice if I add a symlink (old -> new) then Github redirects it to the new location.

[nelsonic]

@npcode are you moving the file using git mv to preserve the file/git history?

[eungjun-yi]

@nelsonic Well, yes, but what I want is not preserving history. I have updated my comment to avoid confusion.

[nelsonic]

@npcode ah, ok. you want GitHub to 301 to the new location if someone clicks on an "old" link.
Its possible this would "break" some other functionality though ...
e.g:

# create a file
vi readme.md
# move the file to a sub-directory
mv readme.md subdir/readme.md

You want a link to github.com/npcode/prjoject/readme.md
to redirect to: github.com/npcode/prjoject/subdir/readme.md

But if you then create another file in the project with the same path as the original

# create new readme in root of project
vi readme.md

what would you expect the behaviour to be...?

[eungjun-yi]

@nelsonic

But if you then create another file in the project with the same path as the original

I assumed I already created a symbolic link 'readme.md' which targets 'subdir/readme.md'. So I can't create another 'readme.md' there.

Here is my example repository: https://github.com/npcode/symlink-test

In the repository, '/hello.txt' is a symbolic link to subdir/hello.txt'. If you click the file in Github Code, Github shows you the contents of the symbolic link. I want that Github redirects it to 'subdir/hello.txt' instead, as Unix-like OS does.

[cassidyjames]

GitHub's current behavior is more similar to a Unix-like implementation; as far as the UI is concerned, hello.txt exists as a pointer to the contents of subdir/hello.txt. It doesn't redirect, as it shouldn't; it displays the file as if it existed at hello.txt.

[mcornella]

Perhaps the symbolic link could be rendered as a link to the target then, instead of a hard redirect.

[firegurafiku]

@npcode

My friends who click the old link I gave before moving the file will see 404 Not Found error.

That's exactly the reason why you should provide your friends with a link based on a specific revision, not on a moving HEAD. That means that instead of

https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/blob/master/README.md

you should post your friends something like

https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/blob/<COMMIT_HASH>/README.md

and expect them to be clever enough to find out a newer revision of the file if they need so.

[flyinprogrammer]

it would also be nice if their text highlighting stopped using only the file name for guidance on how to highlight the file because for things like toml files, the symbolic link will be highlighted in red to indicate an error, which is just wrong.

[tejasvi]

I not sure if this is the right issue but I wish github UI would redirect symlinks to the actual file (if it exists in the repository) instead of showing location in plain text.

[ayoubfaouzi]

yeah +1 for this issue.

[icy]

Symbolic link can cause a loop. This is true on Linux system

$ ln -s a b
$ ln -s b a
$ cat a
cat: a: Too many levels of symbolic links

I think Github will never support this :)

[jszwedko]

Symbolic link can cause a loop. This is true on Linux system

$ ln -s a b
$ ln -s b a
$ cat a
cat: a: Too many levels of symbolic links

I think Github will never support this :)

I think Github could handle this in the same way that Linux does and abort after so many redirects (or cyclical redirects).