Re: Metadata support
Re: Metadata support
- Subject: Re: Metadata support
- From: Dan Shoop <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 18:28:36 -0400
At 2:32 PM -0600 6/25/06, Boyd Waters wrote:
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protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"
On Jun 25, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Dan Shoop wrote:
However copyfile() doesn't seem to preserve *all* the complete,
necessary and expected data associated with Mac HFS[+] files nor
does the ._file mechanism. Specifically symlink ownership, creation
date, and file ID info for Aliases will get clobbered. And there's
also Finder information and Spotlight data stored in the .DS_Store's
And currently (10.4.6) there appears to be no shipping tool that
can copy a file completely. ASR, hdiutil, ditto, cp (and copyfile()
reliant mechanisms) all miss something. Sometimes rather badly.
It would be nice if Apple would at least stuff the creation date in
the ._file under OS X. :(
Wow. Which is why this review of backup software found that only
*one* of all the tools available will preserve all metadata:
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/
In all fairness, the subset of tools covered there is limited. For
instance that blog entry doesn't even mention tar (which fares worse
than cp, btw) or using disk images for backup, nor does it even cover
the popular backup sw package contenders (such as BRU, Retrospect, et
al.) Also its focus is more towards backup than copying, which was
the direction of the OP's question. But it does seem to nicely cover
some of the issues I was referring to.
Is there really no way to copy a file - along with *all* metadata* -
in one operation?
Not currently it seems. :(
And probably it's going to be a very long wait, so long as Apple
keeps cruft in .DS_Store's as said cruft would need to be copied
between source and target .DS_Store's which is a
Moreover Spotlight non-comment metadata isn't likely to get copied
ever, but probably shouldn't be either; nor is there much value as
the kernel can just re-create it.
--
-dhan
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