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Symlinks are not permitted for an ordinary Windows user.
To use them, a switch called "Development Mode" in the system settings has to be enabled.
This prevents users per default to install gems using symlinks.
One such example is haml-rails-3.0.0.
It uses symlinks for files and directories.
The resulting error message is not very helpful:
```
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError)
You don't have write permissions for the directory. (Gem::FilePermissionError)
```
Instead of fixing the situaltion in the affected gem or to skip symlinks completely,
I think the better solution would be to make copies of the files in question.
This would allow Windows users to install and use the gem smoothly.
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Symlinks are not permitted by default for a Windows user. To use them, a switch called "Development Mode" in the system settings has to be enabled.
What was the end-user or developer problem that led to this PR?
Ordinary users as well as administrators are unable per default to install gems using symlinks.
One such problematical gem is
haml-rails-3.0.0.It uses symlinks for files and directories.
The resulting error message is not very helpful:
What is your fix for the problem, implemented in this PR?
Instead of working around the situation in the affected gem or to skip symlinks completely, I think the better solution would be to make copies of the files in question. This would allow Windows users to install and use the gem smoothly.
I didn't adjust the rubygems tests to support this non-developer-mode use case, because I want to ask if this approach is acceptable, first.
The switch for the "Developer Mode" is available in the Windows registry under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModelUnlockentry
AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicenseMaybe we could add a Github Action run with
AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense=0, and adjust the tests to succeed in both cases.Make sure the following tasks are checked