Re: Finder's network browsing
Re: Finder's network browsing
- Subject: Re: Finder's network browsing
- From: Quinn <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:43:07 +0100
At 8:44 +0100 10/7/07, Dr.Ian Silvester wrote:
Another way to ask this might be "What does Finder do with respect
to server symbolic links that the command line cannot? Is this
functionality exposed to 3rd party software, or can it be explained
simply enough to be duplicated?"
This answer relates to 10.4.x and earlier. Things are very likely to
change in the future.
To understand what's going on here, you need to understand that
Finder is not layered directly on top of BSD file system APIs
directly. Rather, Finder uses File Manager which uses BSD. Thus, if
you want to behave like the Finder, you have to view the world from a
File Manager perspective.
In this case the /Network directory is populated by automount using
various maps (most notably, the -nsl map, which gives you dynamic
browsing). Each item appears to BSD clients as a symlink (a typical
behaviour for automount). File Manager represents symlinks to its
clients as synthetic aliases. The Finder then displays the items as
aliases. It's the act of resolving these aliases that triggers the
volume mount (potentially with UI).
You might be able to replicate some of this behaviour yourself by
calling File Manager and Alias Manager. However, I generally
recommend against trying to match the exact behaviour of the Finder
in this respect. It's tricky and it changes over time. As I
mentioned earlier, it's likely to change again in future system
software, and change in such a way that makes it virtually impossible
for you to replicate.
btw There's more info about synthetic aliases in DTS Q&A 1351
"Directories Appear as Volume Aliases".
<http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2004/qa1351.html>
btbtw We recently started up a new mailing list to discuss file
system development issues. If you're interested in file system
issues, like this one, you might consider joining.
<http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/filesystem-dev>
S+E
--
Quinn "The Eskimo!" <http://www.apple.com/developer/>
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Macnetworkprog mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden