Symlink to file:// repos by adding ?symlink suffix

[patmaddox]

(note: I haven't written C++ in ~20 years! all suggestions welcome)

I posted in the forum dev thread asking about workflow for developing reapacks. I found it a bit clunky to develop by adding scripts directly via actions, and then to elsewhere add a package.

It would be nice to install a package locally so it symlinks to files. Then as you edit the scripts, Reaper will pick up the updates automatically, just like if you added the scripts directly without ReaPack.

To use it, append ?symlink to a file:// repo URL, e.g. file:///path/to/my/index.xml?symlink. Install (or reinstall) a package, and it will symlink the files instead of copying them. Reaper picks up any changes you make to the script.

Tested on MacOS 10.15.6, REAPER 6.68

[patmaddox]

I'm not sure what to do here... I've tried a bunch of different variations. I don't have a windows machine, so it takes ~15 minutes for CI to provide feedback.

[cfillion]

The Windows API needs UTF-16 wchar_t strings instead of UTF-8 char strings:

return CreateSymbolicLink(nativeLink.c_str(), Win32::widen(target).c_str(), 0);

(CreateSymbolicLink is an alias for CreateSymbolicLinkW. CreateSymbolicLinkA takes const char*, but its character set is limited to whatever the current system ANSI codepage is.)

Also I'm pretty sure Windows requires the process to gain admin privileges to be allowed to create symlinks... (And the SYMBOLIC_LINK_FLAG_ALLOW_UNPRIVILEGED_CREATE flag requires Developer Mode to be enabled.) If so I don't think this will be acceptable as a feature, or it will need to only be available on Linux/macOS...

Anyway, I'll check & review the PR more closely later on. Thanks for the PR!

[patmaddox]

Thanks! I changed it to use Path and now the Windows build went green.

I hope you will consider including it, even if we have to disable support for it on Windows. It's super handy.