Munckfish.net

I’ve often wished I could use Unix style symlinks on Windows for easing path problems while developing software. I wasn’t aware that in fact NTFS does support symlinks but only for directories. Confusingly though, Windows doesn’t ship with ANY tool to actually create them!

Apparently Microsoft intended that you could only use this feature by purchasing an extra set of utilities. However, there is a freeware tool on sysinternals.com called Junction which can be used to create them.

The advantage of symlinks over Windows’ Shortcuts is that they can be navigated transparently from within other software e.g. the command shell or scripts. Whereas Shortcuts are really just files with link data which is interpreted by Explorer (as far as I can tell).