checking in links to source control

[Edward Peschko]

hey,

I was wondering the feasibility of checking in links to CVS (before someone 
shouts me down, listen below)


Rationale - for one reason or another, projects out there often contain symlinks
to function correctly. tar supports links, as does uncompress; oftentimes one 
wants to use them to avoid duplication of effort, and yet keep installations 
local.

For example, suppose I have a perl library - 

Config::INI

which I want to use in several projects, located in several sub directories. 
I have two choices:

1) store Config::INI in a centralized location (inside of a central perl 
install)
2) make multiple copies of Config::INI in multiple directories.
3) make symlinks between the directories, one in each project.

Now #1 and #2 have drawbacks as far as maintainablity. Storing libraries in 
a central location implies a build process of some sort. Copying libraries
is foolish, but more convenient because the libraries are local to any given
project.

However,  with symlinks one gets the advantages of the copying, yet none
of the disadvantages they entail. And if cvs handled symlinks, the distribution
method of pushing a project to the world would be solved instantly.

Or am I just blowing smoke; does cvs handle symlinks and if so how?
I tried a cvs commit of a symlink; cvs accepted it, but when I did a subsequent
checkout, I got a file back.

Anyways, comments are much appreciated... its frustrating to think that such a 
simple function isn't handled by cvs... which leads me to believe that I've
overlooked something...

Thanks much,

Ed