I have no idea what I'm doing.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Directory junctions for dropbox

Some time ago Dropbox switched their default direction location from "My Dropbox" to just "Dropbox".  If you happen to have a lot of scripts and apps installed, switching paths will break all kinds of stuff.  There used to be a workaround by installing the old client (0.7.110), then upgrading through various releases to the latest version.  This would let you preserve the old path of "C:\My Dropbox", but that no longer works.  So, we're left with two problems....

  1. We need the old Dropbox clients (installed to "C:\My Dropbox") to work with new script\app paths ("C:\Dropbox"). 
  2. We need the new Dropbox clients (installed to "C:\Dropbox") to work with the old paths ("C:\My Dropbox"). 

How do we do this?  One way is to use symbolic links.  This will create a reference link from one directory to another... similar to a shortcut.  Here's a workaround for each scenario:

1.  The old Dropbox client is already installed at "C:\My Dropbox".  Now we need to create a symbolic link that connects "C:\Dropbox" to "C:\My Dropbox":
Make sure c:\dropbox doesn't exist.  Then from a command prompt type:
mklink /J "c:\Dropbox" "c:\My Dropbox"

2.  For systems with the new Dropbox client installed "C:\Dropbox":  
Make sure c:\my dropbox doesn't exist. Then from a command prompt type:
mklink /J "c:\My Dropbox" "c:\Dropbox"

The other way to fix this problems is to edit all your scripts with the new path change, and also reinstall/reconfigure all your broken apps.  ssssshhhhhhiiiiii