Creating application shortcut in a directory

It's not as simple as I'd have liked, but there is a great class call ShellLink.cs at vbAccelerator

This code uses interop, but does not rely on WSH.

Using this class, the code to create the shortcut is:

private static void configStep_addShortcutToStartupGroup()
{
    using (ShellLink shortcut = new ShellLink())
    {
        shortcut.Target = Application.ExecutablePath;
        shortcut.WorkingDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath);
        shortcut.Description = "My Shorcut Name Here";
        shortcut.DisplayMode = ShellLink.LinkDisplayMode.edmNormal;
        shortcut.Save(STARTUP_SHORTCUT_FILEPATH);
    }
}

Nice and clean. (.NET 4.0)

Type t = Type.GetTypeFromCLSID(new Guid("72C24DD5-D70A-438B-8A42-98424B88AFB8")); //Windows Script Host Shell Object
dynamic shell = Activator.CreateInstance(t);
try{
    var lnk = shell.CreateShortcut("sc.lnk");
    try{
        lnk.TargetPath = @"C:\something";
        lnk.IconLocation = "shell32.dll, 1";
        lnk.Save();
    }finally{
        Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(lnk);
    }
}finally{
    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(shell);
}

That's it, no additional code needed. CreateShortcut can even load shortcut from file, so properties like TargetPath return existing information. Shortcut object properties.

Also possible this way for versions of .NET unsupporting dynamic types. (.NET 3.5)

Type t = Type.GetTypeFromCLSID(new Guid("72C24DD5-D70A-438B-8A42-98424B88AFB8")); //Windows Script Host Shell Object
object shell = Activator.CreateInstance(t);
try{
    object lnk = t.InvokeMember("CreateShortcut", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, shell, new object[]{"sc.lnk"});
    try{
        t.InvokeMember("TargetPath", BindingFlags.SetProperty, null, lnk, new object[]{@"C:\whatever"});
        t.InvokeMember("IconLocation", BindingFlags.SetProperty, null, lnk, new object[]{"shell32.dll, 5"});
        t.InvokeMember("Save", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, lnk, null);
    }finally{
        Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(lnk);
    }
}finally{
    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(shell);
}