The problem is that symlinks are simply lost, while they should get a special file attribute which stores the original symlink and creates that instead on update / checkout / revert on supported platforms:

$ mtn setup .
$ touch foo
$ ln -s foo bar
$ mtn add bar
$ mtn ci -m "test"
$ file -h bar
bar: symbolic link to foo
$ rm bar
$ mtn revert --missing
$ file -h bar
bar: UTF-8 Unicode text

[PATCH] Symbolic link support for monotone.

An all Lua solution is not possible AFAICT.
You must patch/compile the monotone c++ sources.
This is because monotone will walk directories pointed to by symlinks, or complain if the linked path does not exist.

The implementation here adds the symlink as if it were a normal file, containing SyMlInK:<linked path>
This file will be written out by monotone.
When symlink "true" is present in .mt-attrs (added by the add command),
the file is read, unlinked, then a symbolic link created in its place.

If you set the symlink attr of a normal file to true, then the file is checked for the "SyMlInK:" and a warning is issued if not found. So if you value your sanity, do not set the symlink attr on normal files starting with "SyMlInK:"
If you are already insane, feel free to change SYMLINK_MAGIC in unix/process.cc to something like "#include"

On Win32, not tested, but on checkout the normal file should be written out as above, but not unlinked.

Just read the manual in its entirety. This should actually be very easy to add with some addition to the hook that handles the .mt-attrs file...

It would be nice if the .mt-attrs file would be handled automatically. I.e. by adding a hook that creates/updates the file on commits.