Re: Finder's network browsing
Re: Finder's network browsing
- Subject: Re: Finder's network browsing
- From: Dr.Ian Silvester <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 08:43:43 +0100
Thanks Quinn for your usual insightful response!
Distilling what you've said, it seems that for 10.4 and earlier the
choices for leveraging automount are hardcore BSD sockets level
networking or deprecated File/Alias Manager networking; neither is
attractive for different reasons. Hence I'll definitely join the new
list you mention if it'll give me the inside track on 'automated
mounting' (as distinct from automount since I'll bet Bonjour is taking
over) as it might be implemented in 10.5 and up. Additions to
CFNetServices perhaps? Would like not to have to write this myself if
it will soon be provided 'for free' :o/
Cheers,
Ian
On 10 Jul 2007, at 11:43, Quinn wrote:
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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