Traversing symlinks

[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 2011-05-16 19:57, Martin Geisler wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> Way back in 2007, this changeset was added:
> 
>   http://selenic.com/hg/rev/d316124ebbea
> 
> It makes Mercurial abort when it encounters a symlink on the way to a
> file -- even when the symlink points inside the repository:
> 
>   $ ln -s contrib extra
>   $ hg status extra/mq.el
>   abort: path 'extra/mq.el' traverses symbolic link 'extra'
> 
> This seems a tad too restrictive to me, and Bryan did also flag this in
> the test and commit message.
> 
> Would anybody object to me lifting this restriction?
> 

Is this for the case where the symlinkdir ('extra' in your example) is
under the same repo root as where it points to?

Does that mean mercurial would have to track (i.e. recording in history)
the fact that 'extra' is a directory symlink to contrib?

If not, who creates 'extra' and for what purpose?