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Does OSX use extended attributes to track things like the "color" attribute on a file (that shows up in Finder)? Or is this tracked via the .DS_Store hidden fi

by rayvd 10y ago

Does OSX use extended attributes to track things like the "color" attribute on a file (that shows up in Finder)? Or is this tracked via the .DS_Store hidden file?

0x0 10y ago
It uses XAs, check with: mdls some-file-tagged-green (...) kMDItemUserTags = ( Green ) or with xattr: xattr -l some-file-tagged-green (...) com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags: 00000000 62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 A1 01 57 47 72 65 65 6E |bplist00..WGreen|
swift 10y ago
I believe the .DS_Store files are just a fallback so if you are accessing files on a network share or on a file system that doesn't support extended attributes like FAT32, those features can still work. The native implementation on HFS+ uses the extended attributes.
- 0x0 10y ago
  .DS_Store is where finder saves the folder ui configuation (icon positions, list mode, etc) and these files are present even on native HFS+ (although "hidden" by default like any other unix file name starting with ".") There were some reports online that the future APFS in the 10.12 betas didn't leave .DS_Store files around.