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[Bioc-devel] Symbolic links to ExperimentHub files on Windows

Hello all,

My package is failing to build on Windows as one of the functions attempts
to download files from ExperimentHub and then creates a directory with
symbolic links to these files using R.utils::createLink. However, it seems
on Windows that administrative privileges are required to create symbolic
links.

The downloaded files are a HDF5 file and corresponding RDS file for a
HDF5-backed SummarizedExperiment object. The purpose of using symbolic
links to them is so that a directory containing the links can be loaded
using HDF5Array::loadHDF5SummarizedExperiment while leaving the downloaded
files in the ExperimentHub cache.

Without being able to create symbolic links to the files on Windows, the
only alternatives I can think of are to move or copy the files from the
cache into the SummarizedExperiment directory. Neither are ideal solutions
as I would prefer not to move files out of the cache and since the files
may be quite large I would also prefer to avoid copying them.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would really appreciate it.

Best,

Richard