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jbranchaud
44 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
44 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
# Display The Target Of A Symbolic Link
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I have symlinked binaries all over my machine. Many of them are configured via
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my [dotfiles setup](https://github.com/jbranchaud/dotfiles). There are also
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tools like `uv` that install CLI tooling in a canonical place and then symlink
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it to a more user-friendly location.
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`ruff` which I [installed as a CLI tool via
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`uv`](python/globally-install-cli-tool-with-uv.md) is a good example of this.
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When I look at the location of `ruff` via the `which` command, I get a `bin`
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directory that differed from where I expected `uv` to install it.
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```bash
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❯ which ruff
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/Users/lastword/.local/bin/ruff
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```
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When I `ls` that directory, I can see it is full of symlinked binaries (as
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annotated by the trailing `@` symbol).
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```bash
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❯ ls /Users/lastword/.local/bin
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./ cursor-agent@ pplay@ tmux-fork-repo@
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../ figprev@ pyright@ tmux-new-session@
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agent@ ghprs@ pyright-langserver@ v@
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bic@ git_better_branch@ pyright-python@ wait_for_port@
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bip@ local-clone@ pyright-python-langserver@
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claude@ nvims@ ruff@
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command-history-preview@ pingf@ task*
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```
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To resolve one of these symlinks to their target location, I can use the
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`readlink` utility.
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```bash
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❯ readlink /Users/lastword/.local/bin/ruff
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/Users/lastword/.local/share/uv/tools/ruff/bin/ruff
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```
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And there it is, the actual directory where I expected `uv` to have installed
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`ruff`.
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See `man readlink` for more details.
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