[Adium-devl] Alias instead of symlink?

[Peter Hosey]

Why are we now using an alias instead of a symbolic link on the disk  
image?

I can cite one reason to switch back. I created a disk image on my  
computer, where the startup volume is called “Macintosh HD”, and sent  
it to David; he reported that he cannot open the Applications alias.  
This is in line with how an alias works:

1. First, the HFS ID for the file is tried. If this works, the file  
is considered to still exist.
2. If not, the file no longer exists, but there may be a new file in  
the same place (at the same HFS path). If so, that file is used, and  
the alias is updated to the new HFS ID.

The part where this falls down is that aliases use HFS paths, not  
POSIX paths.

	POSIX: /Applications (Good! Works for any startup volume.)
	HFS:   Macintosh HD:Applications: (Bad! Only works for people with  
the default volume name.)

Which is fine for 90% of users as long as the person who builds the  
dmg has their boot volume set to the default name. Do we really want  
to tie it to that?

What was wrong with the symbolic link?
________________________________
\ Peter Hosey / prh at boredzo.org
PGP public key ID: 7AB26BAD (since 2006-01-01)

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