[tex-live] Gow

[Joseph Wright]

> Could anybody install Gow (at least the programs ln and ls) and tell
> me whether this works:
>
>    1. cd /path/to/texlive/20xx/bin/win32
>
>    2. del pdflatex.exe
>
>    3. ln -s pdftex.exe pdflatex.exe
>
>    4. pdflatex --version
>
> ?
>
> And what is the result of "ls -l pdflatex"?  Do you see something like
> "pdflatex ->  pdftex"?

Nope: 'symbolic links are not supported on this system'. Cygwin's ln is 
playing slightly fast and loose (as it's not using features of the file 
system), whereas I assume that GOW is as far as possible not modifying 
the originals.

> Don't be worried if it doesn't work.  You can always restore
> pdflatex.exe:
>
>    cd /path/to/texlive/20xx/bin/win32
>    copy /b pdftex.exe pdflatex.exe
>
> BTW, I read somewhere that Vista provides "real" hard/symbolic links,
> whatever this means.  But I assume that they depend on NTFS.  Thus,
> they are not an option because USB sticks still use the dumb VFAT file
> system.

Indeed, NTFS provides 'junctions', which is what you've described. 
However, as you say this doesn't work on older file systems.
-- 
Joseph Wright