Symlinks on windows?

Question

Does anyone know of a way to make/read symbolic links across versions of win32 from Python? Ideally there should be a minimum amount of platform specific code, as I need my

Answer 1

Using mklink command in subprocess create link.

from subprocess import call
call(['mklink', 'LINK', 'TARGET'], shell=True)

Answer 2

Trying to create a Symlink in Windows I always got the error

A required privilege is not held by the client

However I was successfull when creating a shortcut with this code

import win32com.client
import pythoncom
import os

def create_shortcut(original_filepath, shortcut_filepath):
    shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
    shortcut = shell.CreateShortCut(shortcut_filepath)
    shortcut.Targetpath = original_filepath
    shortcut.WindowStyle = 7
    shortcut.save()

create_shortcut(r'C:\Users\xxx\Desktop\test.jpg', 
                r'C:\Users\xxx\Desktop\test.lnk')

Note: make sure the shortcut ends with '.lnk'

Answer 3

here is the link containing all methods of kernel32.dll

http://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/win32/kernel32/api/

I used CreateHardLinkA on Windows xp sp3, it worked!

import ctypes if os.path.exists(link_file): os.remove(link_file)

dll = ctypes.windll.LoadLibrary("kernel32.dll")
dll.CreateHardLinkA(link_file, _log_filename, 0)

Answer 4

Problem is, as explained e.g. here, that Windows' own support for the functionality of symbolic links varies across Windows releases, so that e.g. in Vista (with lots of work) you can get more functionality than in XP or 2000 (nothing AFAIK on other win32 versions). Or you could have shortcuts instead, which of course have their own set of limitations and aren't "really" equivalent to Unix symbolic links. So, you have to specify exactly what functionalities you require, how much of those you are willing to sacrifice on the altar of cross-win32 operation, etc -- THEN, we can work out how to implement the compromise you've chosen in terms of ctypes or win32all calls... that's the least of it, in a sense.