Do not munge contents of local symbolic links

This lets Emacs deal with arbitrary local symlinks without
mishandling their contents (Bug#28156).  For example,
(progn (shell-command "ln -fs '~' 'x'") (rename-file "x" "/tmp/x"))
now consistently creates a symbolic link from '/tmp/x' to '~'.
Formerly, it did that only if the working directory was on the
same filesystem as /tmp; otherwise, it expanded the '~' to
the user's home directory.
* lisp/dired.el (dired-get-filename): Use files--name-absolute-system-p
instead of rolling our own code.
* lisp/files.el (files--name-absolute-system-p): New function.
(file-truename, file-chase-links): Use it to avoid mishandling
symlink contents that begin with ~.
(copy-directory, move-file-to-trash):
Use concat rather than expand-file-name, to avoid mishandling
symlink contents that begin with ~.
* src/fileio.c (Fmake_symbolic_link): Do not expand leading "~" in the
target unless interactive.  Strip leading "/:" if interactive.
(emacs_readlinkat): Do not prepend "/:" to the link target if
it starts with "/" and contains ":" before NUL.
* test/src/fileio-tests.el (try-link): Rename from try-char,
and accept a string instead of a char.  All uses changed.
(fileio-tests--symlink-failure): Also test leading ~, and "/:",
to test the new behavior.

1 files changed, 24 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 02de66b355f..d53e0d25f78 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -1228,6 +1228,30 @@ instead of to utf-8.  Before this change, Emacs would sometimes
 mishandle file names containing these control characters.
 
 +++
+** 'file-attributes', 'file-symlink-p' and 'make-symbolic-link' no
+longer quietly mutate the target of a local symbolic link, so that
+Emacs can access and copy them reliably regardless of their contents.
+The following changes are involved.
+
+*** 'file-attributes' and 'file-symlink-p' no longer prepend "/:" to
+symbolic links whose targets begin with "/" and contain ":".  For
+example, if a symbolic link "x" has a target "/y:z", (file-symlink-p
+"x") now returns "/y:z" rather than "/:/y:z".
+
+*** 'make-symbolic-link' no longer looks for file name handlers when
+creating a local symbolic link.  For example, (make-symbolic-link
+"/y:z" "x") now creates a symlink to "/y:z" instead of failing.
+
+*** 'make-symbolic-link' now expands a link target with leading "~"
+only when the optional third arg is an integer, as when invoked
+interactively.  For example, (make-symbolic-link "~y" "x") now creates
+a link with target the literal string "~y"; to get the old behavior,
+use (make-symbolic-link (expand-file-name "~y") "x").  To avoid this
+expansion in interactive use, you can now prefix the link target with
+"/:".  For example, (make-symbolic-link "/:~y" "x" 1) now creates a
+link to literal "~y".
+
++++
 ** Module functions are now implemented slightly differently; in
 particular, the function 'internal--module-call' has been removed.
 Code that depends on undocumented internals of the module system might