sym links in windows

I’d heard about this before, but finally had a need for it. Behold Winbolic.

From the docs:

Windows has the ability to create folder links, which allows you to create “alias” folders whose contents are really from another folder. Links essentially allow access of one copy of data from several locations on your computer. For those familiar with Unix symbolic (symlink) and hard links, Windows has a somewhat equivalent link type for each. Unfortunately, Windows does not include any tool to create these types of links; that’s what Winbolic Link was created to be.

Links may be created to allow multiple organizations of files, to reduce clutter, or to allow programs to be moved or installed on another drive without the operating system noticing.

Note this is more powerful than a shortcut. When you create the link it actually behaves like the item (file or folder) you are linking to.

Like many companies, we are provided a private network drive where we are meant to store our files (G:\ in our case) and I wanted to keep my photos there, but wanted the convenience of having pictures in “My Documents\My Pictures”. So now “My Pictures” points to “G:\z.Personal\Pictures” (the z. is for sort order purposes). I’m sure I’ll go overboard with this now that I know how powerful it can be.

I see why Microsoft didn’t choose to support this directly – its pretty difficult to explain.