WSL: Using A WSL symlink folder from Windows

Question

I use WSL almost exclusively, and only switch to main windows for browsing and running Windows native programs. I have a git repository located at /mnt/c/myrepo. In order to "install" the code inside /mnt/c/myrepo I need to move it to /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed. Instead of executing cp -r /mnt/c/myrepo /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed every time I do a git pull from /mnt/c/myrepo, I would like to symlink /mnt/c/myrepo to /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed. However when I do this, the program which consumes /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed isn't able to view the "contents" of renamed as a directory.

I have been all over the WSL github repo and issue tracker trying to find a solution to this issue. I see a lot of exclamations about how symlinks "just work". I have enabled every Windows 10 developer feature I can find, I even followed some reddit thread where someone claimed that purchasing Pengwin and creating a symlink from Pengwin would ensure this compatibility, but I still can't seem to make this work.

The basic usage I need, is allow me to view "renamed" as a directory from windows, or for windows to recognize the symlink as a symlinked directory.

from wsl:

ln -s /mnt/c/myrepo  /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed

from windows:

1. open file explorer
2. navigate to c:\otherlocation
3. open mydir and view the contents as if it were a native directory

How do I do this?

Answer 1

Do the symlink in Windows, in cmd.exe:

mklink /d C:\otherlocation\renamed C:\myrepo

It doesn't make sense creating the symlinks in WSL if both directories are in Windows.

This symlink will work in WSL as well.

Answer 2

The solution to this problem is simply to use the relative path when declaring the link. If you want to link from windows to windows, you should relatively path from the current directory and then you can link anywhere you wish.

From the example, instead of this:

ln -s /mnt/c/myrepo  /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed

Do this:

cd /mnt/c/otherlocation
ln -s ../../myrepo ./renamed

Answer 3

Since this seems to be the only SO post that has any googlejuice when searching for Symlink from Windows to WSL I thought I'd add the answer to that question, ie,

how to make a "symlink" from the windows filesystem to the wsl filesystem, that works for windows apps?

answer was in the comments, credit to @Mikepote

1. first open Powershell with Run as Administrator

2. then run

 New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "windows-path\to\symlink" -Target "\\wsl$\Ubuntu\home\yourusername\path\to\target-thing" 

substitute your distro name for Ubuntu above if necessary, and yourusername obviously too.

Answer 4

If the folder is in a drive, the latter can be mounted inside WSL:

mkdir /mnt/z
mount -t drvfs Z: /mnt/z

/etc/fstab can be updated accordingly.

Answer 5

To add to https://stackoverflow.com/a/76181147/12094608

If you want to make a symbolic link for a Windows program to a WSL file, but want to make this link from the WSL side instead of opening Powershell as an elevated user yourself, (for example, because your .dotfiles setup/install script is ran from WSL) then you can write a simple bash script such as this:

ps_command='New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path $env:APPDATA\alacritty\alacritty.toml -Target \\wsl$\Ubuntu\home\kamiel\.dotfiles\alacritty\alacritty.toml'

powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process PowerShell -Verb RunAs -ArgumentList '$ps_command'"

We make a variable ps_command that holds the command from the referenced answer (using a variable will ensure that powershell retains the special characters in the command, otherwise you'd have to escape characters such as the \ because PowerShell is weird.)

Then we start powershell.exe as an elevated user (this will prompt you with a UAC popup, AFAIK there's no way to do this unattended due to security reasons), and execute the command to create the symlink.

To elaborate on what happens in my exact example is that Alacritty on Windows looks for the config file in %APPDATA%\alacritty\alacritty.toml. The file actually lives in WSL, at ~/.dotfiles/alacritty/alacritty.toml. So we create a symlink on Windows' side to the actual location of the .toml in a WSL dir.

Answer 6

Creating a hard link between directories using cmd with administrator privileges worked for me:

mklink /H C:\Users\NameNoSpace "C:\Users\Name With Spaces"