Can not collectstatic with symlink option in Windows Vista (and Windows 7 and 8) platform

[Vajrasky Kok]

In Windows Vista,

C:\SuperSecretProject>python manage.py collectstatic -l
.....
Symlinking is not supported by this platform (Windows)

But I am an administrator. I have the power to create symlink.

​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link
​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

[Vajrasky Kok]

PR to uplift this restriction: ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/1956

[Florian Apolloner]

The current checks in the PR aren't enough, if you are on python 2.x and run collectstatic on Vista with -l it will fail. Basically symlinking on windows is only supported on windows vista (and above) + admin account + python3.

Also can you clarify on the administrator bits, do you effectively log in as administrator or will every symlink call ask you if you want to allow it?

[Vajrasky Kok]

In Windows Vista, to be able to create symlink, I need to right click the Command Line menu, then click "Run as Administrator". Without this, when I create symlink through os.symlink, I will get error that I don't have enough privileges.

Oh, yeah, I forgot that prior Python 3.2, os does not provide symlink in Windows. Sorry about that.

In Windows XP, you could have the ability to create symlink, but you must install third-party driver. According to Python core developers, they are against giving this feature to Windows XP in Python stdlib. ​http://bugs.python.org/issue19792

So here is the updated PR. ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/2011

Windows XP -> no symlink
Python 2.7 in Windows Vista -> no symlink
Python 3.3 in Windows Vista -> symlink (of course you must have administrator privilege)

[Vajrasky Kok]

It is possible to give symlink support in Python 2.x in Windows. But that requires ctypes and win api.
​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6260149/os-symlink-support-in-windows

But I think I would upset a lot of people in Django if I did that.

[Aymeric Augustin]

I'm accepting the idea in general.

However the feature detection code in the current patch looks messy to me (~30 lines) and hard to get right.

I'd find it more pythonic to create the symlink and provide a suitable error message if that fails. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission :)

[Aymeric Augustin]

Please add a line in the 1.7 release notes too!

[Vajrasky Kok]

Okay, I have updated the PR based on your request. Thanks!

​https://github.com/django/django/pull/2011

[Jannis Leidel <jannis@…>]

In 5cc0555603167c7532b7b714e2672687da8f106e:

Fixed #21482 -- Uplifted restriction of collectstatic using symlink option in Windows NT 6.

Original patch by Vajrasky Kok. Reviewed by Florian Apolloner, Aymeric Augustin.

[Claude Paroz <claude@…>]

In 18b3788401e823266a560b12000697da04490beb:

Cleaned temp dir in symlinks_supported()

Refs #21482.

[Claude Paroz <claude@…>]

In a90f0e605e9a7c1b30ccdca222ee2a0e7a78043b:

[1.7.x] Cleaned temp dir in symlinks_supported()

Refs #21482.
Backport of 18b3788401 from master.