[cmake-developers] Windows symbolic links handling

[Brad King]

On 08/14/2017 06:35 AM, Manu wrote:
> Recently I migrated from cmake 2.8.12 to cmake 3.8 and FILE(TIMESTAMP ...)
> behaviour changed. Now it reports symbolic link timestamp instead of pointed
> file timestamp.

Can you track down when that happened?

> patch to fix both get_filename_compoment and FILE(TIMESTAMP ...)
> 
> What troubles me is that symlink under Windows is a feature introduced in
> Windows Vista and the change for handling them will break Windows XP
> compatibility. Is this acceptable?

We still support running on XP.  If any newer Windows APIs are needed they
need to be looked up dynamically.  Also, behavior changes for existing commands
may need a policy.

See also https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/16926 for discussion
of symbolic link APIs.

-Brad