See [[todo/windows_support]]..

## symlinks

Apparently new versions of Windows have something very like symlinks.
(Or really, 3 or so things not entirely unlike symlinks and all different.)
Stackoverflow has some details.

NTFS supports symbolic links two different ways: an [[!wikipedia NTFS symbolic link]] and an [[!wikipedia NTFS_junction_point]].  The former seems like the closest analogue to POSIX symlinks.

The windows port will not use symlinks. It will only support direct mode.

## POSIX

Lots of ifdefs and pain to deal with POSIX calls in the code base.

Or I could try to use Cygwin.

## Deeper system integration

[NTFS Reparse Points](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365503%28v=VS.85%29.aspx) allow a program to define how the OS will interpret a file or directory in arbitrary ways.  This requires writing a file system filter.

## Developement environment

Someone wrote in to say:

> For Windows Development you can easily qualify
> for Bizspark - http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/
> 
> This will get you 100% free Windows OS licenses and
> Dev tools, plus a free Azure account for cloud testing.
> (You can also now deploy Linux VMs to Azure as well)
> No money required at all.