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Re: Finder's network browsing
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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
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