Should symlink option in nbextensions API fall back to copy? about notebook HOT 12 CLOSED

Let's close it. It doesn't seem to have been a big issue in practice.

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Can we have a third option like ifNotWindows (string of object) that would do the sane things and let extensions override that if they really wish to ?

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We could. Though I think if we go that way, it should probably be ifPossible rather than ifNotWindows - in some cases it may be possible to make a symlink on Windows.

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We could. Though I think if we go that way, it should probably be ifPossible

Yep... I think is a better name...

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I'm not sure. I might be inclined to just force symlink=False on Windows (maybe warn). That seems relatively common practice for other projects. Windows may technically have symlinks now, but they don't seem reliably functional.

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I believe that if you succeed in making them they work, but making them in the first place requires a permission bit that non-admin users don't have by default. But it's probably rare enough that we could just assume there's no symlinking on Windows.

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We now force symlink=False when os.symlink is undefined (Windows Python 2). This may be sufficient, though we should think about what we do in the symlinks-available-but-not-allowed case.

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This may be sufficient, though we should think about what we do in the symlinks-available-but-not-allowed case.

I guess some kind of warn and force to False...

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I'm not sure we can reliably detect the case until we get to the end and it fails, though.

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I know this one has been dormant for a while, but I don't think we should attempt to copy if a symlink fails and a user has requested symlink=True. Too much surprise.

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Hi All: what is the next step on this issue? Should it be added to the backlog as a development item, be labeled as a reference, or closed? Thanks!

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Not sure, thoughts @minrk @takluyver ?

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