Symbolic links in Windows, finally!

One feature I love in linux are those symbolic links. I just can’t get enough.

I put’em all over the place to simply my life. Up until today, I’d been looking to do the same in Windows XP, without too much success. The fact is this is not new news to hardcore Windows dudes/dudettes.

This article by Sparkane explains the ins and outs of using Junctions in Windows XP to replicate the some of the functionality of symbolic links in *nix. The utility to make it happen is available on the Systernals website. Simply download, unzip and place in a folder in your path (I used C:/Windows).

Now, I can create a junction for the « My Virtual Machines » folder in My Documents, which VMware Workstation insists on (re)creating every time it launches. The fact is that all my VMware images are on a separate drive to speed up my system, and because they take so much room…

Using junction "My Virtual Machines" "d:/My Virtual Machines", the problem is solved. And Windows is now happy to jump to my files on the D: drive when I dive into that folder.