Symbolic Links in TeamSite7.x

Hello,
this isn't a biggie but I thought I would ask to see if other people have come across this as I find it curious...

We use a lot of symbolic links in our site, and we apply them and deploy them from TeamSite workareas - I would think a lot of people do the same? Generally that works fine both in our old TS672 and new TS732.

However in TS732 I noticed we get an error in our templates (brought over from 672) if a browse button field has a sym link as its content. Just get "Save was unsuccessful" and "saving..." not completing i.e. it didn't pinpoint the error and we had to go find it. If we then select a physical file we can save the DCR.

So I started a Support case about this, and I've received a response stating that sym links are generally not supported as follows - not just in template browse but in the store as a whole. I find it strange given that I would think many people would use sym links and in fact they have their own icon and alt tag in the TS UI. Is it just me?

Cheers
HF

From HP-Aut Support:
Engg confirmed that TeamSite does not support the use of symlinks for assets in the TeamSite store and advised to place the actual assets in place of symlinks.

Starting with 7.x dependency management is introduced in TeamSite and the issue is resulting from symlinks not being supported for dep mgmt. It is also confirmed that this isn't an issue that can easily be resolved via a patch. This will be a product change requiring Product Management inputs and a release in which we can plan and investigate.

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Comments

nipper

I have always avoided sym links.

Do they point in or out of the workarea ?

HurricanesFan

I have always avoided sym links.

Do they point in or out of the workarea ?

Always relative, so within the workarea when they are within the workarea.

Suppose you want to link a number of templated pages to your current annual report. If you set up link annreport.html --> 2013/annreport.html, then if all your DCRs could select annreport.html, all you would have to do is change your link to annreport.html --> 2014/annreport.html and deploy the link and new annual report. That strikes me as easier than having to go into a bunch of DCRs, change the file in each, regenerate and deploy each one. I'm surprised that others don't do this.

Adam Stoller

The reason symbolic links don't make much sense within TeamSite is that symbolic links don't make senses from a versioning and historical restoration / verification standpoint.

That being said, I've worked on a number of projects where symbolic links were used - but mostly in the context of configuration files (e.g.: DCTs and PTs) and not for actual content assets (e.g.: DCRs) - and although it was clear there might be some issues surrounding them, they seemed work.

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