(BTW, it's best to use a separate thread for each issue.)
Confirmed with Soft Links. (Is OK with hard links.) I've added this to our issue queue.
[quote]Second, copying a folder that contains a junction:
- Using Windows Explorer, the junction becomes a normal folder in the target location and the files inside are not copied over.
- Using Directory Opus, the junction becomes a normal folder but all files within are copied.
Of course, different users will prefer different behaviors here! So I'm suggesting a new option (or an "advanced copy/move" dialog prehaps) that will allow more control over this. I think it should support all 3 cases:
- Windows Explorer behavior (empty folder is created in target, junction is lost, files are not copied)
- Opus behavior (files are copied, junction becomes normal folder in target)
- New behavior (preserve junction in target) <-- This is what I need actually
[/quote]
What Explorer does doesn't make any sense to me, and isn't what you want either, so I don't think it's worth adding that as an option.
Being able to copy junctions as junctions may be worth adding, although it is also quite complex and also a little esoteric.
If the junction being copied points to a folder which is also being copied, should the new junction point to the original folder, or to the new copy? Just detecting that and doing different things in each case is complex enough, both for the code and for the user to understand. (And, if any junctions are created implicitly, it's really important that the user always knows and understands what has happened, in case they go and delete the original directory without realising the copy they made isn't really a copy.)
If the junction points to something on another drive, it may not be possible to re-create it in the destination. (Should that then be an error, or converted into what Opus does now, where it copies the data normally?)
TBH, I think it is very unusual to need to copy junctions regularly enough that you can't do it by hand. There are specialised command-line tools and scripts out there (and an Opus script could also be written) but each one is slightly different, since there are so many different cases to handle and different esoteric requirements from each person who needed to do something like this...
Go OpenContainer=Target will work with shortcuts, junctions and soft links. You could put that on alt double-click via file types. If you wanted a toggle option that affects normal double-clicks, it's possible to do that via scripting and variables. Play music albums when their folders are double-clicked is an example script which changes what happens when folders are double-clicked.