Soft Linking

• ln -s <source> <destination>

  1. if a folder will go inside a preexisting destination folder then use

     • ln -s /path/to/source/ /path/to/destination/

  2. if a folder will become a destination folder then use

     • ln -s /path/to/source/ /path/to/destination

  3. when soft linking the source path must be reachable as-is from the destination ... for example:

     1. if server folder resides at ~/dev/project/server and we want to put a soft linked version of it under the ~/dev/project/linkUnderMe/ folder as ~/dev/project/linkUnderMe/server

        1. ~/dev/project/server

           • exists

        2. ~/dev/project/linkUnderMe/

           • exists

        3. ~/dev/project/linkUnderMe/server

           • this soft link is what we want to accomplish

     2. then

        1. go to cd ~/dev/project/ and try

        2. ln -s ./server ./linkUnderMe/server

           1. but it will NOT work!

           2. because ./server is not reachable from inside of ./linkUnderMe/ as-is

        3. ln -s ./../server ./linkUnderMe/server

           • will work

        4. ln -s ~/dev/project/server ./linkUnderMe/server

           • will work