'
```
It looks like this issue has not been solved for many years: [communities.vmware.com/thread/312591](https://communities.vmware.com/thread/312591)
> I ended up moving the directory out of my VM’s shared folder to a new location.
> It seems to be installing fine now.
> **I don’t guess the symlink works when its in a shared folder**.
[stackoverflow.com/questions/40920896#comment69054665\_40920896](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40920896#comment69054665_40920896)
> **Symbolic links seem to be a recurrent problem for VMWare shared directories** between different operating systems.
[github.com/Cisco-Talos/pyrebox/issues/12#issuecomment-320589824](https://github.com/Cisco-Talos/pyrebox/issues/12#issuecomment-320589824)
> Currently **for Windows hosts symlinks are not supported**.
> We currently don’t have plans to add it either.
[sourceforge.net/p/open-vm-tools/mailman/message/29280098](https://sourceforge.net/p/open-vm-tools/mailman/message/29280098)
> The underlying file system in Windows is NTFS which does not support symbolic links in the same way as Linux does.
> **The creation of symlinks in directories that are NTFS mounts (like the vagrant shared folders) will always fail**.
[github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/5840#issuecomment-115051381](https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/5840#issuecomment-115051381)
So, how to use **VMware Workstation** as a development environment for Discourse with Windows host operating system?
Maybe there is a workaround?
---
### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [12월 27, 2017, 5:02오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hgfs-shared-filesystem-in-vmware-does-not-support-symlinks/76797/2 "2017-12-27T05:02:41Z")
What instructions are you following? I don’t recall having ever seen any that involved going into `/mnt /hgfs/code`
---
### Author:  [@dmitry\_fedyuk](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dmitry_fedyuk)
#### Post date: [12월 27, 2017, 5:27오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hgfs-shared-filesystem-in-vmware-does-not-support-symlinks/76797/3 "2017-12-27T05:27:10Z")
I need to make the Discourse’s folder shared between my Windows host and my VMware Workstation Ubuntu guest to use an [integrated development environment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment) (IDE) of my host operating system.
---
### Author:  [@dmitry\_fedyuk](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dmitry_fedyuk)
#### Post date: [12월 27, 2017, 5:45오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hgfs-shared-filesystem-in-vmware-does-not-support-symlinks/76797/4 "2017-12-27T05:45:35Z")
My workaround is to patch the [`Plugin::Instance.activate!`](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/v1.9.0.beta17/lib/plugin/instance.rb#L408-L461) method.
Locate the code:
>
Replace it with the code:
```plaintext
Discourse::Utils.execute_command('rm', '-rf', target)
begin
Discourse::Utils.execute_command('ln', '-s', public_data, target)
rescue
Discourse::Utils.execute_command('cp', '-r', public_data, target)
end
```
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [12월 27, 2017, 5:45오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hgfs-shared-filesystem-in-vmware-does-not-support-symlinks/76797/5 "2017-12-27T05:45:36Z")
I use VMWare, strongly recommend against putting the code in the fused filesystem it will be much slower. I keep it on my ext3 volume inside the vm.
If really really want windows to have access to this stuff for IDE
Option 1:
Set up samba locally and just edit off samba
Option 2:
Use something like [http://docker-sync.io/](http://docker-sync.io/)
---
### Author:  [@dmitry\_fedyuk](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dmitry_fedyuk)
#### Post date: [12월 27, 2017, 6:00오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hgfs-shared-filesystem-in-vmware-does-not-support-symlinks/76797/6 "2017-12-27T06:00:49Z")
What do you think about including [my solution above](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/76797/4) to the code?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [12월 27, 2017, 6:12오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hgfs-shared-filesystem-in-vmware-does-not-support-symlinks/76797/7 "2017-12-27T06:12:31Z")
It breaks the way plugins install, not ideal.