exe-link

Simple binary link maker for Windows, especially MINGW.

Installation

go get github.com/wirekang/exe-link

You need Go because this program generates lightweight go code and builds it.

Usage

exe-link <source> <destination>

Similar with ln -s <source> <destination>

It creates <destination>.exe file that executes <source> file. You can input both arguments in relative path, the program will convert source path to absolute path.

Example

exe-link Neovim/bin/nvim.exe vim Output filename is vim.exe. Now you can execute nvim.exe by typing vim in cmd, powershell, MINGW and so on with any arguments.

Motivation

In unix system, we can set alias of commands via ln. For example, we can execute neovim by type vim or nvim after link vim to nvim

ln -s /usr/local/nvim /usr/local/vim

In windows, There is similar command mklink, but they don't work in CLI. Excuting link from gui(explorer) work as fine, but meaningless. Shortcuts go without saying.

There is one cmd-only way. we can make .bat or .cmd files to execute certain file with arguments.

%PATH%\ crm.bat

"C:\ProgramFiles....chrome.exe" %*

Now crm works fine(open chrome) in cmd or powershell Because they infer crm.bat or crm.cmd or crm.exe from crm. But in MINGW, they don't infer .bat or .cmd automatically unlike .exe. We should specify extensions on every execution.

$ crm
bash: crm: command not found

$ crm.bat
C:\Users\dmhsk\workspace\exe-link>"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
    // works

In my case, I want to use neovim in IntelliJ Terminal by vim command. I could do that by renaming nvim.exe to vim.exe, but that's not a programmer's way. So I made this simple program.