Why can’t I symlink into /usr/bin? El Capitan’s new System Integrity Protection feature prevents changes to several core parts of OS X, including most of /usr/, even by root. How can I still add executable files to my path? Local customizations, such as what you’re doing, belong in /usr/local instead. The path /usr/local/bin doesn’t exist … Read more
Symbolic links have more functionality, while junctions almost seem to be a legacy feature because of their limitations, but the security implications of these limitations are specifically why a junction might be preferred over a symbolic link. Remote targeting makes symbolic links more functional, but also raises their security profile, while junctions are safer because … Read more
realpath isn’t available on all linux flavors, but readlink should be. readlink -f symlinkName The above should do the trick. Alternatively, if you don’t have either of the above installed, you can do the following if you have python 2.6 (or later) installed python -c ‘import os.path; print(os.path.realpath(“symlinkName”))’
readlink -f “$path” Editor’s note: The above works with GNU readlink and FreeBSD/PC-BSD/OpenBSD readlink, but not on OS X as of 10.11. GNU readlink offers additional, related options, such as -m for resolving a symlink whether or not the ultimate target exists. Note since GNU coreutils 8.15 (2012-01-06), there is a realpath program available that … Read more
This is the behavior of ln if the second arg is a directory. It places a link to the first arg inside it. If you want /etc/nginx to be the symlink, you should remove that directory first and run that same command.
What I did to add to get the files within a symlink into Git (I didn’t use a symlink but): sudo mount –bind SOURCEDIRECTORY TARGETDIRECTORY Do this command in the Git-managed directory. TARGETDIRECTORY has to be created before the SOURCEDIRECTORY is mounted into it. It works fine on Linux, but not on OS X! That trick … Read more
-L returns true if the “file” exists and is a symbolic link (the linked file may or may not exist). You want -f (returns true if file exists and is a regular file) or maybe just -e (returns true if file exists regardless of type). According to the GNU manpage, -h is identical to -L, … Read more
Windows 10 (and Powershell 5.0 in general) allows you to create symbolic links via the New-Item cmdlet. Usage: New-Item -Path C:\LinkDir -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value F:\RealDir Or in your profile: function make-link ($target, $link) { New-Item -Path $link -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value $target } Turn on Developer Mode to not require admin privileges when making links with … Read more
Update note For most Windows developers struggling with symlinks and git on Windows and the issues of sharing a repo with *nix systems, this topic is a solved problem — once you update your Windows understanding of mklink a bit and turn on Developer Mode. See this more modern answer before digging into the following … Read more
This will recursively traverse the /path/to/folder directory and list only the symbolic links: ls -lR /path/to/folder | grep ^l If your intention is to follow the symbolic links too, you should use your find command but you should include the -L option; in fact the find man page says: -L Follow symbolic links. When find … Read more