As developers, we can have lots of config files (.zshrc, .psqlrc, init.lua etc) to customize our development environments. Over time, managing these files across multiple systems becomes a hassle.
For this, I started saving them in a git repository. While this helped, it still an inefficient solution. Every time I changed a file, I had to manually update it in the repository as well. This resulted in extra work and sometimes I missed updating the repository.
Then I learned about symlinks, which eliminated the need to manually update both the file and the repository.
What is symlink?
Symlink, short for symbolic link, is a file that points to another file called target.
Instead of copying a configuration file across different systems, you can create a symlink that references the original file. Any changes made to the original file are automatically reflected in the symlink.
You can create symlink for both file & directory.
How to Create a Symlink?
Creating Symlinks in Windows
- Open command prompt as an administrator
- Use this command to create symlink
mklink "\path\to\symlink" "\path\to\target\file"- Make sure symlink doesn’t exist already
eg
mklink "C:\Users\user\alias.sh" "D:\path\to\dotfiles\alias.sh"Creating Symlinks in Linux
- Use this command to create symlink
ln -s /path/to/source/file /path/to/target/file-sstands for “symbolic” and tellslnto create a symlink rather than a hard link
eg
ln -s ~/dotfiles/.zshrc ~/.zshrc- To know the target file of the symlink, we could use the following command:
ls -l /path/to/symlink - Linux syntax is opposite from windows, where target is given later
Conclusion
In this article, we learned how to use symlinks for managing your files more efficiently. For further readings, check out symlink management tools such as stoa (linux), chezmoi (cross-platform).