Symlink Editor

A graphical Symlink Editor for Linux. Uses GTK 3 and Python 3. Tested on Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, and 22.04, but it should work anywhere you can install GTK bindings for Python.

usage: symlink-editor [-h] [-new] [-dir DIR] [-leaveopen] [path-to-edit]
graphically manage symbolic links
positional arguments:
  path-to-edit  open an edit dialog for this path
options:
  -h, --help    show this help message and exit
  -new          open a dialog to create a new link
  -dir DIR      start in this path instead of the default
  -leaveopen    leave main window open after editing

Features:

• Notice broken symlinks easily (red highlighting)
• Edit a symlink target or rename it
• Copy/duplicate/move symlinks
• Folder navigation (press icon in location bar to go up)
• Use with “Open with…” in a file manager
• Runnable as root with sudo (please be careful!)

Installation:

1. If you’re not on default Ubuntu (Gnome Desktop), then run sudo apt install python3-gi to install Python support for GTK
2. Recommended on Ubuntu: Create a folder called “bin” in your home folder and extract this code in that folder. This is a standard location for weird user-installed apps such as this.
3. Edit the symlink-editor.desktop file to have a valid filepath to the symlink-editor file (and the icon you want)
4. Copy/move the symlink-editor.desktop file to /usr/share/applications and your desktop environment’s app launcher should detect it
5. If you can’t run the file, try marking it as executable (using properties window or chmod +x from terminal)

Development

• Because the GTK widgets are defined in Python code in one giant file, the code is not readable by mortal eyes. But it is technically being maintained as of 2022. Pull requests are welcome, but beware :)