Should we abstract links?

[BurtHarris]

On Windows, for security reasons, the best choice for transparent directory links is usually junctions, and the best choice for transparent file links is usually hardlinks. Since that's different from Unix, perhaps vinyl-fs should expose an abstract way of creating links rather than using specific terms like symlink, hardlink, and junction.

For example, if we have an operation just called link that implements platform-specific logic in choosing the type of link, and throws if its not possible to create a logical link given the parameters passed to it.

P.S. To further complicate things, consider that Windows also has shell shortcuts; similar, but a bit different, these are sometimes called shell links. They may not enter into the same model, but it might make sense to include them: shell links can exist in the file system, and point to locations in a shell namespace inside or outside the file namespace. I know that's probably weird on Unix; they don't participate automatically in file-system name resolution but for UI purposes they are the most flexible form of links. So for example, adding a program item to the "start" menu, desktop, or the control panel is usually done with a shortcut.

[phated]

Having explored this rabbit hole pretty deeply now (due to #254) - I think that something like this would need to be delegated into node core to be a proper abstraction.

The only thing we could do would be to rename our symlinks method to something more platform agnostic but I think a majority of the community using links understands the implication of the name.