Not sure if this is already supported (or currently being discussed), I am hoping to add support to view remote FS symlinks as Windows shortcuts.
I have used similar projects that use WinFSP such as SSHFS-Win, and when you mount a remote SSHFS it shows symlinks within the FS as Windows shortcuts. I am hoping to have a feature similar to that. I tried --links when mounting but the flag doesn't do anything special.
By the way, here's my version information:
rclone v1.63.1
os/version: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 22H2 (64 bit)
Do you realize that in most cloud storage systems there is no concept of symlink?
Symlinks only make sense for local filesystem (and maybe sftp).
You used SSHFS-Win I imagine to access other computer file system.
Now it would be very edge case for rclone and indeed there are better tools to do it like SSHFS-Win. If your goal is to mount locally other machine filesystem rclone is not tool you should use.
This should not be a goal of rclone to replace any tool imaginable.
I think this should be an rclone feature as well imo since rclone supports SFTP/SMB/...etc. (local FS). When cloning target remote FS we should take into account not to duplicate files/dirs when the remote is marking some items as symlinks. rclone treats every link as hardlink, and performing copying from target to local will duplicate the linked items as well.
Agree with you. It would be nice to have. But also think it is very edge case. So yes if somebody implements it we will all be happy. If not we will use other tools.
When doing what you described I would recommend to use rsync instead of rclone.