WinXP Hard Links

Cygwin’s ln command can create a symbolic link to a directory on WinXP. Unfortunately, a symbolic link on WinXP is just a shortcut, which many programs, such as Jakarta Tomcat, can’t follow. Shortcuts just don’t cut it;-)

If you want a directory link that Tomcat can follow, you need WinXP’s version of a hard link. But if you try creating a directory hard link with ln, Cygwin says you can’t.

However, it is possible to create a hard link to a directory on WinXP. There are several semi-obscure utilities that do it. The one I like best is WinInternals’ Junction utility. It accomplishes the same thing that ln does on Linux.

Maybe someday the clever Cygwin developers will upgrade their ln command to have Junction’s hard link ability.