A URL tells you how to find a resource. A link: URL provides a level of indirection: It tells you how to find a resource which contains the URL of the real resource.
When connecting to a link: URL, a new URL is created by stripping the link: prefix. The input stream obtained from this stripped URL is parsed as plain text. The first non-empty and non-comment line is taken to be the URL for the real resource. Comment lines start with a hash '#' character, optionally preceded by whitespace.
Syntax
link-uri := 'link:' any-uri
Examples
link:file:/home/hwellmann/work/pax-exam.link
The content of the link file can look like this
# This is a comment # followed by some empty lines mvn:org.ops4j.pax.exam/pax-exam/2.2.0
Links to classpath URLs can be useful for libraries to provide a default URL which a user may override by prepending the classpath with a library of their own containing a resource of the same name:
link:classpath:META-INF/links/pax-logging.link