[Lazarus] Absolute paths on different platforms

[Marco van de Voort]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 04:43:18AM +0100, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> > This is THE difference to symlinks. On POSIX basic APIs like "open" will 
> > be applied to the target of the symlink not the symlink itself.
> 
> NTFS *Reparse Points* allow for many modifications of "normal" file 
> handling, beyond POSIX capabilities, and IMO including true hard and 
> symbolic links (IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK).

Up to and including NT5.x, there were only reparse points, and they could
not refer to external disks, no utility was available by default, and they
were dangerous, since not correctly treated in the explorer.

Since NT6 there are true symlinks (also to external drives), an utility is delivered
to created them, and the explorer supports them. Still they are not used
much :_)
 
> Some of these features have been added only after W2K, as Mark 
> annotated. It may be for compatibility reasons, or not-updated Explorer 
> behaviour, when links and shortcuts still are stored in the old-fashion way.

The tipping point is Vista, not XP afaik.