The "checkout scm" pipeline task when used for the p4plugin intermittently corrupts symlinks. Instead of create a symlink, it seems that the "p4 sync" is create a text file and the content of the file is the destination that the symlink would point to.
$ ls -l /jenkins/workspace/e_dev-KK246RZWMFT6CWJS6OTBGLMLTACX7NHSGHICXOVCAFVC6S2TK3RA/coverity.conf
rrr- 1 jenkins-agent jenkins 23 Jun 10 09:51 /jenkins/workspace/e_dev-KK246RZWMFT6CWJS6OTBGLMLTACX7NHSGHICXOVCAFVC6S2TK3RA/coverity.conf
$ cat /jenkins/workspace/e_dev-KK246RZWMFT6CWJS6OTBGLMLTACX7NHSGHICXOVCAFVC6S2TK3RA/coverity.conf
no_integ/coverity.conf
When the "checkout scm" works, the output looks like this
$ ls -l /jenkins/workspace/dev-ZKMEBZTMPZSI7NMLJWXPTTFRX3Z67EZAASPHONVQ32DG2EV3MQDQ/coverity.conf
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 jenkins-agent jenkins 22 May 27 03:08 /jenkins/workspace/dev-ZKMEBZTMPZSI7NMLJWXPTTFRX3Z67EZAASPHONVQ32DG2EV3MQDQ/coverity.conf -> no_integ/coverity.conf