Symbolic links are quite obnoxious to create on Windows, especially that Windows depends heavily on graphical user interface. This program makes it super-easy to create a symbolic link with a right click.<\/p>\n
In the broadest terms, Symbolic links are simply shortcuts. But they differ from shortcuts in the way they work.\u00a0A shortcut is a file, and is recognized, system-wide, as a file. Windows knows how to deal with\u00a0shortcuts and takes you to the target. Symbolic links are a lower level constructs that act like shortcuts, but they’re not files. They are\u00a0built within the file system. Programs cannot normally distinguish between real directories and symbolic links; hence, it’s the perfect tool to trick a program to its location. Unix operating systems use them consistently all the time.<\/p>\n
Example: For example, if you have a huge directory that you want to move to some other drive, but you’re afraid it would break something if you move it, you simply create a symbolic link with the same name of the directory, and put it in its place, and move the directory wherever you like. Any program using that directory won’t notice the difference.<\/p>\n
I tested this extensively on Windows 10. Please let me know if it needs further development for other Windows versions.<\/p>\n
You definitely need an NTFS file system. FAT32 doesn’t support Symbolic Links.<\/p>\n
There are two ways to create symbolic links with Easy Symbolic Link:<\/p>\n
After installing the software, simply right click on a directory or file, and choose “Create Symbolic Link”, and you’re done \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Following are screenshots as an example<\/p>\n
After clicking on “Create Symbolic Link”, you’ll have the symbolic link created (it will ask you for admin privileges).<\/p>\n![\"SymbolicLinkContext\"](\"https:\/\/blog.afach.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/SymbolicLinkContext-1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n