Re:.DS_Store
by jakobegger on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @03:34AM
(#20342371)
But it was pretty neat that you could arrange icons on a floppy disks and then give it to someone else and the icons were in the same position on their computer.
Re:.DS_Store
by matt-attack on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @03:35PM
(#20347890)
It’s still relevant today for external drives.
Disk images, which is how a lot of mac software is distributed also use this feature.
My guess as to the reason they’re in the directory rather than a separate folder is so you can rename/move it without losing all your metadata.
Re:.DS_Store
by andreareina on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @03:11PM
(#20347606)
The filesystem already keeps track of moves/renames -- I can (and have) moved the files that the App Store downloads, and it still knows where they are.
https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Global/macOS...
The worst part is that .DS_Store assumes, even on remote (SMB) filesystems, that only one machine will ever be accessing the directory, and so stores things like view settings and icon positions and such. Which means that every mac computer that accesses that file share will be fighting with each other, overwriting their metadata, and sometimes triggering problems because one has half-overwritten the file while another is accessing it.
That metadata should have been stored locally on the mac (with info about what path it refers to), not on the remote system.
Overall, it's a very poorly designed feature.