ctkUtils.cpp does not normally copy broken symlinks when recursively copying a directory. These couple lines modify its behavior so that it actually copies those links. Those links can be useful for example when one needs to "insall" symlinks on a target computer, but does not have control over that computer to select the path at install time. I…

ctkUtils.cpp

  foreach(const QFileInfo &info, srcDir.entryInfoList(QDir::Dirs | QDir::Files | QDir::NoDotAndDotDot|QDir::System))
    {
    QString srcItemPath = srcPath + "/" + info.fileName();
    QString dstItemPath = dstPath + "/" + info.fileName();
    if (info.isDir())
      {
      std::cout<< "Directory" << std::endl;
      }
    else if (info.isFile())
      {
      std::cout<< "File" << std::endl ;
      if (!QFile::copy(srcItemPath, dstItemPath))
        {
        return false;
        }
      }
    else if (info.isSymLink() )
//For broken symbolic links. We take care of them only after. If the symlink points to a file or a directory,
//we prefer to let the system handle it as a file or a directory and not as a symlink. This should allow backward compatibility
      {
      std::cout<< "SymLink" << std::endl ;
      //we need to change working directories to get the correct link path given by Qt if the link was relative
      std::string fileNamePath = itksys::SystemTools::GetFilenamePath( info.absoluteFilePath().toStdString().c_str() ) ;
      std::string cwd = itksys::SystemTools::GetCurrentWorkingDirectory() ;
      itksys::SystemTools::ChangeDirectory( fileNamePath.c_str() ) ;
      //We get the absolute link path, but we want the relative one
      QString linkAbsolutePath = QString( fileNamePath.c_str() ) + "/" + info.fileName() ;
      QFileInfo fi( linkAbsolutePath ) ;
      QString target = fi.symLinkTarget() ;
      itksys::SystemTools::ChangeDirectory( cwd.c_str() ) ;
      //by comparing the link original path and the absolute path it points to, we get the relative link path
      std::string relativePath = itksys::SystemTools::RelativePath( fileNamePath.c_str() , target.toStdString().c_str() ) ;
      //We set the value of the link we want to create to the relative path we just got
      QFile currentFile( relativePath.c_str() ) ;
      //We create the link in the destination folder
      currentFile.link( dstItemPath ) ;
      }
    else
      {
      std::cout<<"Other" << std::endl ;
      }

To make the code fully Qt/CTK compatible (no itksys), here are some useful functions:
QDir::relativeFilePath
QDir::setCurrent
QDir::currentPath
To construct file paths, prefer QFileInfo fi(QDir, QString) instead of doing string concatenation (see here )

Email from 03/08/2013:

That seems like an interesting feature to add to ctkUtils, could you tweak your code in order to make a pull request with it?
I can think of:
bool ctk::copyDirRecursively(const QString &srcPath, const QString &dstPath, CopyOptions options = SomeDefaultFlags)
where CopyOptions would be a new QFLAGS. (for eg, I can think of options such as ContinueOnError, RedirectSymLinks...)

Julien, the following lines:

QString srcItemPath = srcPath + "/" + info.fileName();
QString dstItemPath = dstPath + "/" + info.fileName();

are already in CTK. I guess those lines should be replaced by QFileInfo fi(QDir, QString) too.