Anyone have an idea why modern versions of MacOS still uses a .DS_Store file? The OS could just as easily read and display the contents of a directory. And deleting a .DS_Store file doesn't seem to have any noticeable negative affect.
MacOS prior to X had much more elegant solutions to the problem. To this day, when you switch to/from icon/list view in the Finder, more windows than just the current one switch. In MacOS 9 that loosey-goosey unpredictable behavior never happened.
And there's almost no way to make this behavior stick because... it's different if you click through folders and if you click on pinned folders in Finder sidebar.
I mean... How?!
Storing a local file inside the directory allows for moving that directory around while also keeping those settings.
The file is invisible for users of Finder so it is still the best solution for this task.
I have a .DS_Store line in a global .gitignore and don't notice it much but when I'm annoyed by DS_Store files in a specific directory, I usually bulk delete them using `fd`:
fd -u --type file --fixed-strings .DS_Store $HOME/Projects/some-file-server-project -x echo rm {}The Wikipedia article is a pretty good resource for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store
For the exact same reason Windows has a Desktop.ini file?
They store per directory settings for the Mac Finder and Windows Explorer.
One thing I've wondered is if this method still makes sense on modern hardware compared to keeping all that information in a centralized sqlite file or something along those lines. I could see individual files being advantageous on a slow mechanical HD where seeking through a file that could eventually grow large might pose issues, but that shouldn't be a problem on an SSD.
The main advantage I can think of that might still be relevant today is that it makes Finder window state machine-independent, so when you open a folder on two different machines it'll still open in list mode sorted by Date Modified or whatever.
Not sure if it's "Desktop.ini" I'm thinking about, but here's some documentation on it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/how-to...
Basically it seems to be the replacement for the old resource fork data on non-Apple file systems.
Custom icons for folders are stored in a special "Icon?" hidden file, but not actually in the file's normal data-- they're in an extended attribute too.
(The xattr in question is called "com.apple.ResourceFork" and I'm presuming is structurally similar to a resource fork in classic Mac OS.)
(Dotfiles are per-user system configuration options written as a file in the user’s home directory. This means that for any system on which that home directory exists, that user’s configuration options will be applied. If the home directory is shared across multiple computers over a network, or if it is backed up from one computer and restored to another, then that user’s settings will persist.)
If these settings were stored in some other central database then if you copied the macOS folder from one computer to another, your copy tool would have to know how copy the settings as well. Keeping those settings inside the folder itself means that your copy tool only needs to know about copying folders, instead of copying folders and also copying settings.
It’s one of those Unix principles where everything is treated as a file: an elegant technique for a more civilized age.