Please describe the problem.

Although it does require you to put your system in Developer Mode, NTFS has supported symlinks without privilege elevation for almost five years now, and has supported them for programs run as administrator since Vista. git-annex, however, unconditionally assumes Windows filesystems are crippled.

What steps will reproduce the problem?

Initialize a git-annex repository on an NTFS partition with a Windows system in Developer Mode.

What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system?

git-annex version: 8.20210715-g7334893d4
build flags: Assistant Webapp Pairing TorrentParser MagicMime Feeds Testsuite S3 WebDAV
dependency versions: aws-0.22 bloomfilter-2.0.1.0 cryptonite-0.26 DAV-1.3.4 feed-1.3.0.1 ghc-8.8.4 http-client-0.6.4.1 persistent-sqlite-2.10.6.2 torrent-10000.1.1 uuid-1.3.13 yesod-1.6.1.0
key/value backends: SHA256E SHA256 SHA512E SHA512 SHA224E SHA224 SHA384E SHA384 SHA3_256E SHA3_256 SHA3_512E SHA3_512 SHA3_224E SHA3_224 SHA3_384E SHA3_384 SKEIN256E SKEIN256 SKEIN512E SKEIN512 BLAKE2B256E BLAKE2B256 BLAKE2B512E BLAKE2B512 BLAKE2B160E BLAKE2B160 BLAKE2B224E BLAKE2B224 BLAKE2B384E BLAKE2B384 BLAKE2BP512E BLAKE2BP512 BLAKE2S256E BLAKE2S256 BLAKE2S160E BLAKE2S160 BLAKE2S224E BLAKE2S224 BLAKE2SP256E BLAKE2SP256 BLAKE2SP224E BLAKE2SP224 SHA1E SHA1 MD5E MD5 WORM URL X*
remote types: git gcrypt p2p S3 bup directory rsync web bittorrent webdav adb tahoe glacier ddar git-lfs httpalso borg hook external
operating system: mingw32 x86_64
supported repository versions: 8
upgrade supported from repository versions: 2 3 4 5 6 7

Please provide any additional information below.

n/a

Have you had any luck using git-annex before? (Sometimes we get tired of reading bug reports all day and a lil' positive end note does wonders)

It's worked excellently under Linux for about 6 months prior to me needing to switch to Windows for unrelated reasons.