Automatic Symlink Utility

About

Automatic Symlink Utility is a small utility which automatically manages symbolic links based on pre-defined values.

The motivation for this utility came from a personal desire to keep application configurations and game saves organized in such a way as to make them easy to access and backup. Existing solutions either consisted of manual symbolic link creation or full backup solutions which created their own non-customizable structure.

Automatic Symlink Utility is intended to offer a middle ground, once the desired symbolic links are defined the utility will move all of the relevant files in to the defined folder locations and create links in the original location. Allowing full control over where and how your configuration and save files are stored.

Features

Automatic Symlink Utility uses an XML file to define the symbolic links to create, the schema provides the ability to create the symbolic links conditionally based on the presence of a given file or folder. The context path should generally point to the application related to the files being linked to, so that links are only recreated for applications and games that are currently installed.

An example XML file is shown below. This includes context path examples to create links only when certain applications, plugins, expansions or games are installed. For further information refer to the schema.

<symlinks>
    <group name="application1" contextPath="C:\app1">
        <symlink contextPath="C:\app1\plugin.exe">
            <linkPath>C:\app1\plugin.config</linkPath>
            <targetPath>D:\Configs\app1\plugin.config</targetPath>
        </symlink>
        <symlink>
            <linkPath>C:\app1\app1.config</linkPath>
            <targetPath>D:\Configs\app1\app1.config</targetPath>
        </symlink>
    </group>
    <group name="game1">
        <symlink contextPath="C:\game1\expansion1">
            <linkPath>C:\game1\expansion1.ini</linkPath>
            <targetPath>D:\Configs\game1\expansion1.ini</targetPath>
        </symlink>
        <symlink>
            <linkPath>C:\User\Games\game1.sav</linkPath>
            <targetPath>D:\Saves\game1\saves\game1.sav</targetPath>
        </symlink>
    </group>
    <symlink contextPath="C:\game2">
        <linkPath>C:\User\Games\game2\saves</linkPath>
        <targetPath>D:\Saves\game2\saves</targetPath>
    </symlink>
    <symlink>
        <linkPath>C:\game3\saves\campaign.sav</linkPath>
        <targetPath>D:\Saves\game3\hard_campaign.sav</targetPath>
    </symlink>
</symlinks>

Versioning

This project uses Semantic Versioning, see SemVer for further details.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License (MIT).