Support symbolic link folders in areas like debug, extensions

[livcurious]

• VSCode Version: 1.16.1
• OS Version: macOS sierra 10.12

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open a empty workspace
2. Create a file and create a symlink to this file in workspace.
3. On opening the file, the linked file will be open in the editor. The path (on hovering over the opened file name) will be shown for the symlink and opening the file in Finder by right clicking will also open the symlink's parent folder.

The issue with this is it also causes inconsistency with Git markers in enhanced scrollbar and all extensions which operate on open file (like gitlens for git blame).

There should be a editor property to configure this path to be set as original file's path or the symlink's path.

Reproduces without extensions: Yes

[mfine15]

What's the status of this? It'd improve the UX of working with C++ projects using clangd + Bazel. Jump to definition will jump to the symlink in bazel-genfiles, even if you already have the target of symlink already open in Vscode.

[axiac]

In my opinion, the symlinks should never be replaced with the real paths they point to. If one component of a path is a symlink then there is a reason behind it. If VSCode resolves the link and uses the real path instead then it breaks the reason the symlink exists. On the other hand, the user could not use the symlink at all and open the project or the file using its actual path; VSCode doesn't bring any improvement here by resolving the symlinks.

[froodian]

The issue is that if you have a symlinked directory inside your workspace (e.g. in a git repo), git tooling no longer functions for files inside that directory.