how to create a symbolic link that works relative to the working directory

Question

consider the following :

x/
    ph/
        file1.txt -> ./../file1.txt
    file1.txt
y/
    ph/ -> /x/ph/ (this is full absolute path of x/ph)
    file1.txt

/y/ph is a symlink for ph folder in x. and file1.txtis a relative symlinks.

it works correctly in x folder however if you open /y/ph/file1.txt instead of opening /y/file1.txt it opens /x/file1.txt

the goal here is to have the same directory (lets say a program) in multiple places with different config files without having to have multiple copies of the program.

according to ln's help

Symbolic links can hold arbitrary text; if later resolved, a relative link is interpreted in relation to its parent directory.

so relative links are relative to the actual folder's path not the current working directory. the question is : is there any workarounds for this ?

test case:

mkdir x y x/ph
echo x1 > ./x/file1.txt
echo y1 > ./y/file1.txt
ln -s $(pwd)/x/ph ./y/ph
cd ./x/ph
ln -s ./../file1.txt
cd ../..
cat ./x/ph/file1.txt
cat ./y/ph/file1.txt

expected result is x1 y1 but you get x1 x1

Edit:

to make the question clearer, run the test case in an empty folder. and try the following commands in the folder:

bor@borpc:~/tmp$ readlink -f ./x/ph/file.txt
/home/bor/tmp/x/ph/file.txt
bor@borpc:~/tmp$ readlink -f ./y/ph/file.txt
/home/bor/tmp/x/ph/file.txt
--------------^

i want that x there to be y. that is to make the relative symlink resolve based on pwd (current working directory or path used to access it) rather than the actual path of the actual file.

if it is possible how would one achieve such behavior.

Answer 1

I'm a bit confused. You might make a symbolic link beginning at root directory (I mean /). For example,

ln -s /root/try/d s

ls -l  
total 0  

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  0 Apr 24 16:15 d  
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Apr 24 16:18 s -> /root/try/d  

Answer 2

You can't do this with symlinks. Symlinks don't work that way. A relative symlink will be relative to the link file itself, not to the path you're in.

You can, however, achieve something similar with a bind mount:

[you@example example]$ mkdir x y x/ph y/ph
[you@example example]$ echo x1 > ./x/file1.txt
[you@example example]$ echo y1 > ./y/file1.txt
[you@example example]$ sudo mount --bind ./x/ph ./y/ph
[you@example example]$ cd ./x/ph
[you@example ph]$ ln -s ../file1.txt
[you@example ph]$ cd ../..
[you@example example]$ cat ./x/ph/file1.txt
x1
[you@example example]$ cat ./y/ph/file1.txt
y1