Re: NSFileManager and aliases
Re: NSFileManager and aliases
- Subject: Re: NSFileManager and aliases
- From: "Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 17:15:16 -0500
Hopefully without starting a holy war:
Aliases are nice. Symlinks are nice. they have different strengths and
weaknesses.
- Aliases do not work across volumes but symlinks do.
- Symlinks are easy to break by moving the file that is the target of the
link, aliases do not break so easily.
- Symlinks work well in network environments with multiple network volumes.
For example, a sys-admin can install an update of an application and every
user's symlinks automatically point to the update. With aliases, this is not
so easy. The admin may have to log into every users machine to update
aliases and the admin may not even know all the aliases that users have
created.
- Aliases work well on a local machine with one hard disk. They let users
configure their machine the way they want it without fear of breaking
things. This was the traditional Mac configuration. Aliases are a power to
the users feature. In the modern networked world, aliases are a new ring of
hell for administrators.
There are many traditional Mac features that worked best before computers
were commonly networked.
There are many Unix features that do not work well if a computer is not
networked.
There are many traditional Mac features that give power to USERS to
configure THEIR machine the way THEY want it.
There are many traditional Unix features that give power to ADMINS to
configure the COMPANY'S machine the way the COMPANY wants it.
This is a clash of cultures.
However, the days of non-networked machines are ending...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Srstka" <email@hidden>
To: "Ondra Cada" <email@hidden>
Cc: "Robert Fischer" <email@hidden>; "cocoa-dev"
<email@hidden>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: NSFileManager and aliases
>
I don't get it. Why do you hate aliases so much? They offer some nice
>
features and flexibility that symlinks do not. The only real drawback is
>
that some API's haven't been updated to support them yet...
>
>
On Monday, April 15, 2002, at 03:16 AM, Ondra Cada wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, April 15, 2002, at 09:40 , Robert Fischer wrote:
>
>
>
>> is it possible that NSFileManager does'nt know anything about alias
>
>> files?
>
>
>
> Of course it is. Whole Cocoa, being unix-born and not MacOS-born, uses
>
> the *standard* API, whilst aliases are very proprietary stuff of HFS+.
>
> Use symbolic links instead (they work much more reasonably anyway).
>
>
>
> Since Apple (triple alas!) pushes aliases to be used instead of
>
> symlinks, it is extremely probable that all Cocoa classes will be made
>
> alias-aware sooner or later. It will take some time though.
>
> ---
>
> Ondra Cada
>
> OCSoftware: email@hidden http://www.ocs.cz
>
> 2K Development: email@hidden http://www.2kdevelopment.cz
>
> private email@hidden http://www.ocs.cz/oc
>
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