What's up with the symlinks in the 7.0-RC2 ISO images?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2008-02-15 14:49, deeptech71 at gmail.com wrote:
>Oliver Fromme wrote:
>> Well, someone might want to look at the "doc" CD on Windows
>> (e.g if he's offline and needs to loo at the docs before
>> installing FreeBSD).
> 
> Or maybe someone might want to make a FreeBSD-7.0-RC2 DVD,
> and a FreeBSD installation is too far away...

That's not a bug of the FreeBSD ISO image, then, but of the process used
to `convert' a perfectly working CD-ROM to a DVD.

The need for a DVD is not unrealistic, and I can certainly understand
*why* you may need it.  The symlinks of the original CD-ROM are not
really a problem if you use a *real* OS to read the ISO image, and not
the jokes which Microsoft creates.  If you use a FreeBSD system for the
`DVD-ROM staging area' with a filesystem not as limited as the usual
Windows filesystems, symlinks should be no problem at all.

>>  - All the ISO images -- including the doc one -- are built
>>    with MS-Joliet extensions (in addition to RockRidge), so
>>    long file names etc. work fine on Windows, too.
> 
> Actually, long file names etc. work fine on Windows without the
> MS-Joliet extensions and with ISO level 2 or 3, but not on DOS though.
> If Windows-readability is a higher priority than DOS-readability
> (definitely!), then lose the symlinks.

Right.  So we have to `cripple' the UNIX users' experience, just to be
able to please the Windows users.  Why does this sound a bit odd?

Giorgos