And the easy fix from the man pages does not exist on macs
If source_file contains a smiley face, and I want to create a symbolic link from some_directory/ to this file, the first Google result for “create a symbolic link” tells me to
$ ln -s source_file some_directory/link
However, on closer inspection, it looks like something is going wrong!
$ cat some_directory/linkcat: some_directory/link: No such file or directory
Read on to experiment a little bit and see where the OS is really looking for the source of our symbolic link. If you want to skip to the end that’s fine too, I’ve included a StackOverflow link with some helpful solutions.
Setup
First, let’s setup a dummy source_file that contains an ascii smiley face
$ cd$ echo ":)" >> source_file$ cat source_file:)
Our goal is to create a symbolic link to source_file. We want to be able to $ cat some_directory/link and see the smiley face from source_file.
Like we saw above, following the the instructions on the first Google result for “create a symbolic link” doesn’t quite work how we expect
$ mkdir some_directory$ ln -s source_file some_directory/link$ cat some_directory/linkcat: some_directory/link: No such file or directory
Ok, Where is Our Link Pointing?
After some digging, I realized that the OS might be searching for my source file relative to the final location of my link! I tested this hypothesis by creating a new source_file adjacent to my link, and giving it a frowny face
$ echo ":'(" >> some_directory/source_file
The new directory structure looked like
source_file # :)some_directory/|-- link|-- source_file # :(
And some_directory/link was indeed pointing to the file with the frowny face
$ cat some_directory/link:'(
some_directory/linkwas not pointing tosource_file, it was pointing tosome_directory/source_file
Fix #1: Recursive Symbolic Links
Once I diagnosed the problem, it was easy to find the right option for ln in the man pages.
$ ln -sr source_file some_directory/other_link$ cat some_directory/other_link:)
But wait! Things did not go this smoothly. As far as I can find, ln has no -r or --recursive option on mac.
Fix #2: Absolute Path
On mac, I could use the absolute path for source_file
$ ln -s ~/source_file some_directory/absolute_link$ cat some_directory/absolute_link:)
Fix #3: Type Out the Relative Link
Or, another option (my preferred — not everyone checks out their git repositories into the same folder on their local dev machine) was to use a source file path relative to the symbolic link
$ ln -s ../source_file some_directory/other_link$ cat some_directory/other_link:)
Conclusion aka TL/DR
As always, StackOverflow has some more great ways to fix this problem
Copying symbolic links in Mac OS X_Join Stack Overflow to learn, share knowledge, and build your career. What is the simplest way of copying symbolic…_stackoverflow.com