in setting up a new dev environment i finally found a way to set up symlinks so I work without having to manually change my test pages. to set up the symlink i used this valuable information:

To set up a symbolic link type

    ln -s linktarget linkname

where linktarget is the directory to link to and linkname is the name of the symbolic link. You can type:

    rm linkname

to remove the link. Type

man ln

for more information.

in order to allow apache access on my mac i had to add an extra entry to the httpd.conf file (on the mac @ /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf – remember to back it up) that looks something like this:

<Directory /where/you/export/your/swf>
    AllowOverride all
    Options FollowSymLinks Indexes
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

now in all of my test pages i can reference

<embed src=linkname></embed>

and whatever swf is in the location that i told the symlink to go to will be pulled in.

Thanks Justin!