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I'm trying to build the swift toolchain on windows on my local machine by following the docs/WindowsBuild.md documentation.

I came across one particular issue I would like to share since it may explains some weird compilation errors on windows I have seen posted on this forum.

In the documentation, it rightly says to use core.symlinks=true when doing a git checkout of the apple/swift repo. It is very important but, the problem is that git synlinks don't work by default for non-administrator on windows unless the Developer Mode is activated in the windows settings.

The WindowsBuild.md talks about the symlink issue for non-administrator later on when doing mlink commands but it should be noted that it also applies for git clone commands with symlinks=true.

It is really easy to miss the error of the git checkout command (at least, I did) and get a compilation error later on.

I'm updating the WindowsBuild.md file as I find issues with it and have already done some pull request. Should I continue to make pull request directly to the apple/swift repo or should I take another route to apply those changes to the documentation ?

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I think that adding documentation indicating the need for the developer mode is the right thing to do. Please send a PR to apple/swift with the suggestions (and please CC me on the PR) and we can discuss them on the PR as appropriate.

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